


Beggars Would Ride

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Series: beggars would ride [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Genderswap, girl!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-28
Updated: 2007-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:18:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tells himself that the line he's crossing can be redrawn, slightly over the edge into fucked up, and isn't that where they've been living anyway since Mom died?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beggars Would Ride

**Author's Note:**

> AU. Sam is and always has been a girl. Thanks to luzdeestrellas for enabling and brainstorming and handholding and betaing and everything else, far above and beyond the call of duty. I'd blame her for this, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly my fault (only mostly though). Thanks also to mousapelli, for taking on the monster and coming up victorious, to amberlynne, who put up with a lot of wibbling while I wrote, to Signe and Minim Calibre for giving it a good looking over, and to Fleur and Gail for previewing and encouraging.

The glass of the windshield is warm against Dean's back, holding the heat from the day, and the May air is humid against his skin. He crosses his ankles carefully, making sure not to scuff his heels against the paint, and links his hands behind his head, getting comfortable.

Sam lies next to him, filmy white skirt tangled up around her thighs, long legs bare in the moonlight, feet flexing and pointing in time with whatever crappy pop song she's humming softly, like she's dancing even when she's flat on her back. She doesn't wear skirts often, and it makes seeing her legs now kind of weird, because he feels like maybe he shouldn't--it's more intimate somehow, which is stupid, because he's seen her in less more times than he can count. He looks up instead, so he doesn't have to think about it.

"Shooting star," he says, pointing. He doesn't believe in wishes, but sometimes he wishes he did, wishes he could give her whatever it is she wants and can't seem to find. Irony, he thinks, is a bitch.

"Ah," she breathes, eyes fluttering closed.

He shifts onto his side to look down at her--she's smiling so it lights up her face, dimples and all.

She opens her eyes and squirms a little, and he knows he's making her self-conscious. He remembers sixteen being full of the discomfort of people suddenly watching you when they'd never noticed you before. And knowing what he knows about teenage boys, it's got to be worse for girls.

"What?"

"What'd you wish for?" He doesn't know why he bothers to ask, braces himself for the litany of Why can't we be normal? and I hate hunting and every other complaint she's made since she was old enough to realize that their family's not like everyone else's.

She wrinkles her nose at him. "Can't tell."

"Come on, Sammy, you can tell me."

"Telling's against the rules," she says, shaking her head, as if she doesn't break the rules when it suits her. Or maybe it's just Dad's rules she doesn't worry about breaking, because she knows he'll always cover for her. "The wish won't come true if I tell."

It won't come true anyway, he almost says, but stops himself. She's old enough to know that, and stubborn enough not to care. Instead, he says, "Yeah, but telling me is just like telling yourself, right? You and me, we're two of a kind. No rules against that."

He can see her thinking about it, brow furrowed and mouth turned down, and then she says, "I'm sixteen and I've never been kissed."

He stares at her for a long moment, fiercely glad on the one hand, because she's too good for the grubby boys she goes to school with--and he knows what those boys want and what they'll do to get it--but shocked on the other, because she's _Sam_, and how can they not see how beautiful she is, how she shines like a light in the darkness?

She takes his silence and surprise the wrong way, words tumbling nervously out of her mouth. "We move around so much, I never get a chance to get to know anybody well enough--"

He doesn't even think about it, which is where his problems usually start. He just knows he's good at this, and he can teach her, make sure she knows what she's doing, make sure she learns to do it right. It's what he does, after all. He's taught her all the necessary things over the years, like how to read, how to pick a lock, how to bring down a werewolf from thirty yards away with one shot. Kissing really isn't any different--damn useful skill to have, really. And obviously, all the boys she knows are morons and can't be trusted with something this important.

And he hates to see that anxious look on her face, like she's done something wrong and isn't quite sure what it is or how to fix it, and he does whatever he can, whenever he can, to make sure she never feels that way at all.

So, he leans in and presses his lips to hers, which are warm and slightly parted. He doesn't do anything else at first, just breathes in her startled gasp, her sudden smile. She doesn't push him away, so he sucks gently at her lips, teasing them open, and she lets him in. He puts a hand on her cheek, can feel her trembling slightly as he licks into her mouth, sucks lightly at her tongue, which still tastes of chocolate from the Hostess cupcakes they had for dessert.

She reaches up, slides her fingers through his hair, holds him to her as she gets the idea, kissing him back with an eagerness that should surprise him, but doesn't.

He eases away, the voice in the back of his head that sounds remarkably like Dad yelling at him to _protect_ his sister, that what he's doing now is _wrong_, but she cups his face and pulls him back down to kiss her again, and this time, she knows what she's doing. She's always been a fast learner, when she's interested in what he's got to teach. He nips at her lower lip and she makes a desperate little sound in the back of her throat, which sends a jolt of heat through him, changing this from an odd but pleasant experience into something more intense, something he _wants_.

She presses up against him and he can feel her heart beating like the wings of a caged bird trying to break free; his heart is doing the same. He kisses her back, tongue moving roughly over hers, learning the taste and texture of her mouth, because he's never been able to lie to her, never been able to say no, and now he wants it as much as she does, wants it in a way he's never wanted anything in his _life_.

He slides his mouth away from hers to kiss along her jaw, then down her throat as she tips her head back, dipping his tongue into the hollow between her collarbones, tasting sweat and soap and soft girl-skin, adding to his store of knowledge. He's the world's foremost expert on Sam Winchester, or so he'd thought until this moment, which is teaching him all sorts of new things about her, like the low moan she makes when he sucks on the spot just below her ear, and the supple, satiny feel of her skin beneath his fingers.

It's warm and soft and a little sloppy, and it's the most perfect thing ever, because it's him and Sam, and they go together like the twin barrels of his old shotgun. But when he runs his hand under her skirt and up her thigh, feeling the soft skin and the light down of hair she hasn't bothered to shave, hears her gasp at the touch, he realizes he has to stop, because it's _him and Sam_, and they're acting like something out of Flowers in the Attic.

"Sam," he says, his mouth against her ear, her name nothing more than a breath, because he's barely breathing, and he can't make himself move away just yet.

"It's okay." It's supposed to be reassurance but it sounds like a plea, and it burns.

"It's really not." His voice is low and rough. He swings his legs down, leans against the car with his back to her, trying to catch his breath.

"Dean, please. I wanted to." Her hands are on his shoulders, warm and strong, the nails trimmed neatly and painted bright blue. He can feel the humid warmth of her breath on the nape of his neck, ragged like she's just been out running, but he doesn't turn around. She huffs in exasperation. "You don't have to be such a girl about it," she says after the silence has started to make him itchy, and he's grateful for it, because a few more seconds of her quiet reproach, and he'd have had her spread out on the hood beneath him, and he needs to not think about that ever again. "It was just a kiss."

But they both know that's a lie, and the words sink like stones between them, ready to drag them under. He's almost willing to drown, and that scares him the most.

She sighs again and pulls away. He can hear her slide down off the hood and head back into the house.

Dean misses the weight of her hands on his shoulders, and the feel of her tongue in his mouth.

*

She sulks for three days, fighting with Dad over every little thing and treating Dean to sullen silence. She's vicious when they spar, but smart about it, so he can't really complain, and he can only shrug and make a crude joke about PMS when Dad asks him what her problem is.

But when Sunday rolls around, and Dad takes them out to Waffle House for breakfast, she's all sunshine and smiles again, and Dean breathes easier. He tells himself she was right, it was just a kiss, and he lets himself believe the lie. It's easier than facing the truth.

She doesn't let him off the hook that easily, though. They've always been touchy, relying on physical contact more than words to show how they feel, but now she's sly about it, and pointed, pressing her breasts to his back when she reads the paper over his shoulder, her mouth too close to his ear and her hands lingering a little too long on his chest or hip to be innocent.

He knows he should ignore it, ignore her, but that's the one thing he can't ever do. And maybe there's something wrong with him, because it's not only that he can't ignore her, it's that he doesn't want to, even though he knows he should, knows the feel of her skin under his fingers or the memory of her tongue in his mouth shouldn't make him hard, but it does, and she knows it, too, and won't leave him alone.

Lucky for him, Dad announces they're moving soon, and Sam transfers all her attention to making him miserable, and stops playing games with Dean that neither of them can win.

*

They pull out of Ashland early in the morning, two days after the end of the school year, and head east. Dean dozes in the passenger seat for a while, his crankiness at being relegated back to passenger status in his own car soothed by the silence now that Sam's shouting about having to leave has settled into a quiet pout.

When he wakes a couple hours later, she's curled up in the backseat, nose buried in a book, frown of concentration on her face.

He looks out the window, and when he finally spots what he's looking for in the light traffic pacing them on the highway, he reaches back and slaps her on the leg. "Punch buggy, black," he says, before she can complain. "No punch backs."

She curls her lip at him in the sneer he taught her that time he'd been obsessed with Elvis. "What are you, seven?"

"Passes the time, Samantha." He twists to look at her. "What are you reading?" She holds up the book so he can see the cover. "Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It. Well, that's cheerful."

"Bite me."

He sighs, rubs his forehead, and tries again. "So, what's so interesting about the flu?"

"It's not so much the flu in general as this strain of flu in particular," she says, leaning forward, open book pressed to her chest, over her heart. "It killed between twenty-five and one hundred million people--nobody knows for sure." Dean lets out a long, low whistle, and Sam smiles, getting her geek on, sulk forgotten for the moment. "It was especially deadly to the young and strong, which isn't usually how the flu works; so many soldiers and sailors died, people thought it was germ warfare, that the Germans had concocted the virus to win World War I. But they were probably just worn down from the fighting, and vulnerable.

"Nowadays, scientists think maybe it was a bird flu that migrated to humans." She chatters on for a bit, talking about genetic sequencing and epidemiology, and Dean holds his breath, hoping Dad doesn't say anything about how she should be putting her big brain to work researching ways to improve their hunting techniques, instead of wasting time on a disease from a hundred years ago.

For once, Dad stays quiet. Dean glances over, and he's wearing this proud look Sammy should get to see, but won't, because this has nothing to do with hunting. So Dean turns to her again and smiles, because if Dad can't give it to her, he will.

"That's pretty cool, Sammy."

Her mouth quirks again, this time in a half-smile. "Yeah."

He turns to face forward, pleased with himself.

After that, she starts quoting random statistics at them, her voice soft and interested, in counterpoint to the world-weary tones of Johnny Cash playing on the tape deck, and Dean listens, even after he's pulled out the latest issue of _Popular Mechanics_ and is trying to read about advances in jet propulsion.

And then, she whacks him on the back of the head.

"Hey!"

"Punch buggy, green. No punch backs."

Dad glances over at him, mouth curving in a rare grin. "She's got you there, son."

Dean laughs. "I guess she does."

*

Dean shifts in the chair, trying to ease the crick in his neck. Dad had sounded genuinely regretful when he explained that there was only one room left at the motel, and Sammy had sunk back into the sulk she was treating them to for having to move again, but it was easy for them. They each got to sleep in a bed, even if it was a creaky, saggy motel room bed. The clerk had manfully refrained from laughing when Dean asked about a rollaway, which Dean figures is about the response he deserves for thinking a place like this would even have one.

The rattle and buzz of Dad's snoring is making him crazy after months of actually having his own room, and he's trying really hard not to listen to the slide of Sam's legs underneath the sheets as she tosses and turns, trying not to remember the feel of her skin beneath his fingers. In the weeks since he kissed her, he's stopped thinking about it whenever he has a free second to think, but now they're all living in the same room again, and it's hard not to, when she's walking around in nearly nothing all the time, skin tanned golden from spending all day in the sun when they're not driving from one place to the next.

It's too goddamn hot in the room, with the windows painted shut and the ancient air conditioning unit chugging asthmatically in the corner. He gathers up the sheet he'd kicked off earlier and levers himself out of the chair in frustration, shoving his feet into his boots. He grabs the extra pillow from the floor where it landed when he'd tried to find a comfortable sleeping position, and opens the door.

Dad stirs, murmurs, "Dean?"

"Going out to the car," he answers softly, and with a grunt Dean takes for permission, Dad's snoring away again.

Dean stomps out to the car and flings himself into the backseat, the leather so cool and good against his bare legs and chest after the itchy, warm brocade of the chair. He cranks open the windows to let the light summer breeze in, and settles down, breathing easily for the first time all night.

He's drifting over the line into sleep, the cool familiarity of the car lulling him like nothing else can, when the door to the room opens with a creak, waking him. He looks up to see Sammy scrambling across the gravel, barefoot.

She pokes her head through the open window. "You couldn't sleep either?"

"Insomniac little brat," he mutters in response.

"Hey!" She opens the door, crawls onto the seat and stretches out beside him, wriggling under the sheet and fitting herself into what little space is left.

This, he thinks, even as he automatically wraps his arms around her to keep her from falling, is a really bad idea.

She's wearing a tank top and a pair of his old boxers, and as they fit themselves together, shifting so he's on his back and she's lying on top of him, he can feel the rough brush of stubble against his shins and the soft curves of her breasts against his chest. The chubby twelve-year-old is gone, replaced by a young woman with a sleek, toned body that fits against his perfectly. He can't decide if it's the best thing or the worst thing ever that he didn't stop to pull on a t-shirt before he came out to the car.

"Sammy?"

"It's okay," she murmurs, and brushes a hand through his hair, the way he does to hers when she has nightmares. She shimmies again, trying to get comfortable, and he sucks in a deep breath, willing his body not to respond, and failing. "It's okay. I want to." She leans in, and he can feel her breath--sleep-stale but still edged with the scent of toothpaste--on his chin before she takes his lower lip between hers and sucks on it, sending a shock of pleasure right to his dick.

There are things he knows he should say--_we shouldn't_ or _stop_ or _no_\--but she steals the words from his mouth with her tongue, and the only one he has left when she pulls back is, "Sam."

She smiles at him, eyes and teeth shining dark in the moonlight, and whispers, "Dean," before kissing him again, deep and slow and sleepy, like they have all the time in the world and nothing better to do than make out in the backseat of the car.

He didn't teach her this, but she hasn't been out of his sight long enough to learn it anywhere else since summer started and they've been on the road. Maybe it's just some secret Sam-thing she knows, like the way she knows how to get under his skin with her endless questions about everything, and the way she knows how to get him to do what she wants by giving him that lost puppy-dog look. And it's just like her to make a choice and throw herself into it completely, determined to have her way and refusing to bend until she gets it.

He can't really think too much about it with her tongue in his mouth, sliding slick-rough against his, soft and warm as velvet. He wraps one hand around the nape of her neck, fingers trailing up into the tangled curls there, making her shiver. He slips his other hand under her worn cotton tank top to trace circles on the smooth skin of her back, and the light, strong bones of her spine.

It's been a while since he's done this with anyone, making out for the fun of it instead of in a frantic rush to get laid, and in the wet heat of their kisses, he nearly forgets why they shouldn't be doing it. The only thing he can think is _Sam, Sam, Sam,_ each staccato beat of his heart echoing with the sound of her name.

She rubs against him like a cat, hands stroking over his chest and shoulders, making him shiver with need, then brushing through his hair, feather-light on his face, learning him the way he already knows her, strengths and weaknesses, needs and wants.

He smiles at the way she gasps, "God, _Dean_," when he finally touches her breasts, thumbing the hard little nipples as she arches into his hands. He drags her up his body so he can take them into his mouth, one at a time, sucking hard enough through the soft, thin cotton that tastes of Sam-sweat and Tide to make her moan. He slides a hand down her back to grab her ass as she rocks against his hard-on, and she freezes, as if she's just realized what she's doing.

"Dean?" Her voice is hoarse and slightly shaky, and she says his name the way she used to, like he can make everything better, make the monsters in the closet go away.

"Sammy," he says, trying to get his breathing under control, suddenly aware that not only is she his sister, she's a sixteen-year-old girl whose only sexual experience has been with her brother, and this is even more fucked up than anything they've ever done, and given some of the shit they've done, that's saying something. He swallows hard, brushes her hair out of her eyes. "Go back to bed, Sammy." She opens her mouth to protest, and he says, "Dad can't find us like this."

She's smart enough to know he's right, but she leans in to kiss him one last time before she goes, tongue thrusting into his mouth quick and hard like a promise.

After he hears the deadbolt slide home behind her, he slips a hand into his boxer-briefs and wraps it around his cock. He tries to remember the last girl he fucked, tries to imagine _Playboy_'s Miss July, but when he comes, all he's thinking of is Sam.

Dad, he thinks, is going to kill him. And Dean won't do a thing to stop him.

*

When Dean comes into the room in the morning, Sam's sitting in front of the television, shoveling Cheerios into her mouth. She watches him, eyes wide and wary, and he sucks in a startled breath when he sees the hickey he left on her throat. _Stupid, stupid, amateur mistake_, he thinks.

Dad looks up from his journal and says, "You look like you got bit, too, Dean."

Dean nearly chokes, but he manages to keep his cool, turn it into a cough. "Mosquitoes were a bitch last night," he says when he's able to speak again.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this place has bedbugs," Sam says. "Maybe I should spend tonight in the car with Dean."

Dean glares at her, but she's still looking at Dad, challenge in her eyes.

"Or maybe you should spend the day helping Dean do laundry," Dad answers. "You can strip the beds and wash the sheets if it's bothering you that much."

"Maybe if we went back to the bug-free house in Ashland--"

"School's out and we have responsibilities."

"Maybe you do, but I don't see why Dean and I have to come along." She thins her lips and raises her chin in defiance.

"Don't start," Dean interrupts. He can feel the headache beginning just behind his left eye. "Just...don't, okay? Not today." He grabs clean underwear out of his duffel bag, stalks to the bathroom, and slams the door shut behind him. He listens for a moment, but they seem to have settled down--the only thing he hears is the drone of the weatherman's voice predicting ninety-five and humid again, and thunderstorms at night.

*

Dean drops Sam at the laundromat and heads to the nearest coffee shop, looking for coffee and some information on the rash of mysterious deaths plaguing visitors to the town.

When he comes back, she's sitting on one of the empty dryers, long, bare legs dangling down the front, one flip-flop on the floor, the other hanging precariously from her brightly-painted toes, on its way to joining its mate. She's leaning back on her palms, and the straps of her tank top are slipping down her shoulders, revealing strips of pale skin untouched by the sun. She's not wearing a bra--says she doesn't need to, but he's starting to think she's wrong. She looks like seven different kinds of sin all rolled up into one tanned, toned package, and he's never been good at resisting temptation.

She lights up like an EMF meter in a haunted house when she sees him, makes him feel like a hero. Sometimes, he feels like she's the only right thing he's ever done in his life, and he's so close to fucking it up completely, if he hasn't already, that he almost turns around and walks out.

He thinks about it sometimes--not very often, but occasionally, and more now than when Sammy was younger and needed him like breathing--when she and Dad start yelling at each other and her voice scrapes like nails on a chalkboard against his ears, all the words she uses worse than curses (hate this and normal and why? why? why? all the time, like she's still four, and doesn't like the answers they give her), he thinks about walking down to the train station, buying a ticket to anywhere, and starting over again, without a backwards glance. But he knows he'll never do it, not when she looks at him like this, like he's Batman and Santa Claus all rolled into one.

He holds out the iced mochaccino she didn't ask for but he knows she wants, but she doesn't jump off the dryer like he expects; instead, she raises one hand and crooks her fingers at him. She's got another think coming if she thinks he'll go for that. He drops into one of the bright yellow, molded-plastic seats opposite the machine she's sitting on, leans back, one arm draped along the seatbacks, and smirks.

She cocks her head, considering, and then slides down off the dryer. He supposes she means to be smooth, but there's an awkward coltishness to her, and she stumbles a little over the discarded flip-flop. She reminds him of Bambi, learning to walk on the ice, spindly legs flying out in all directions, but just for a second. She's got training and reflexes, and she's getting used to the new shape of her body; when she does learn to control it (and the day's not far off; he can tell), she'll be deadly, in more ways than one.

She takes the plastic cup from him, wraps her full, pink lips around the straw and sucks, hollowing out her cheeks, holding his gaze, mischief in her eyes. The guy behind the counter, who's been pretending he's not staring at her for as long as Dean's been there, gives her a lingering once-over, and Dean wants to knock the guy's teeth down his throat.

"Cut it out, Lolita," he says, elbowing her, and when she laughs, loud, open-mouthed, and genuine, he says, "It's not that funny."

"I'm not twelve," she answers. "And you're not--"

"Responsible? Your brother? What? What can you possibly say--"

"I love you." She says it like she's said it to him every day of her life, and she has, but almost never in words. It's not something they say, avoiding the words because saying them is like painting a target on their backs; they are more aware of the power of words to invoke, to hurt, to soothe, and those words are powerful magic they're too superstitious to call on overtly. It hits him now like a punch to the gut. He thinks vaguely that he should be proud--he's the one who taught her to fight dirty, to take every advantage, and to always hit the enemy's weak spots hardest, and it's clear she's taken his lessons to heart.

"Fuck you." He gets up, shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn't grab her and shake her and make her take it back.

She stares up at him for a long moment, then looks down at her hands, and he hates that he can't tell which way she's going to jump. Time was, he'd have known exactly what she was thinking from the set of her lips, the curve of her spine, but that seems to have disappeared the day she got her first period, sprouted breasts when he wasn't paying attention. The breasts don't look like much, small and high and bound flat when they're hunting, but now he knows the weight of them in his hands, the sounds she makes when he touches them, and it's a whole different language from the one they used to speak. He turns away, hands curled into fists in his pockets, nails digging into his palms as if he can dig the memory out of his skin.

A washing machine buzzes, and she starts unloading the washer and loading the dryer, her arm brushing against his, warm and familiar, the Sammy he knows, not the stranger she's becoming.

"What'd you find out?"

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and tells her.

*

The summer rolls by in a series of dusty towns and miles of highway, white lines and black asphalt scrolling like an endless set of veins across the body of the world: redcaps in Lexington, a nest of pixies in Fayetteville, a cranky old ghost in Buckhannon.

They eat breakfast in roadside diners, Dad and Sam doing the crossword together--in Latin, sometimes, or with runes, to make it more interesting--while Dean reads the sports pages to keep up with the Cubs, their futile quest for a championship inspiring loyalty the way winning teams never have with him. Sometimes, he imagines going to Wrigley, or Fenway, seeing if there really is a curse keeping the Cubs or Sox from winning, and if there is, trying to break it.

Dad buys a hibachi, sets it up in the parking lot of whatever motel they're staying at, and grills dinner for the three of them each night. Sometimes they sit out under the stars and listen to a ballgame on the radio, or play cards until it's too dark to see, Sam sneaking sips of beer from Dean's bottle while he and Dad pretend not to notice.

It's as close to normal as they get, and Dean thinks he would be happy living this way for the rest of his life.

There are long days of training, honing Sam into a stronger fighter now that she's done growing. Their sparring is edged with tension that sends Dean out at night, looking for a fight or a fuck, and not too picky about which he finds, just so long as he doesn't have to go back to the motel and see the invitation in her eyes, and the hurt when he turns it down and climbs into his own bed.

"I think we should give her some privacy," he says one afternoon while she sleeps in the backseat, loose-limbed and sprawling, pillow clutched in her arms like the teddy bear she lost somewhere in South Dakota when she was ten, and she spent the week after crawling into Dean's bed to use him as a replacement. Their boundaries have always been fluid--he can count on one hand the times she's locked him out of a room--and maybe that's the problem. The look Dad gives him makes him say, "I can stay with you. I don't need my own room. I just think--"

"She doesn't sleep well when you're not around."

He nods, forcing himself not to feel guilty about being out all night the last few nights, with pretty college girls slumming it on their summer vacations, and the big-breasted bottle-blonde from the local coffee shop.

"I get that, I do. But she's going to have to learn sometime." He shifts, unused to arguing with his father and unsure of how to approach what he wants to say. "People notice. She's not a little kid anymore, Dad, and, well, people notice."

Dad nods once, his mouth tight. "People are always willing to think the worst, Dean. But right now it's safer for her if you're there. She's strong, she's well-trained, but she's always going to be," he doesn't say, _younger_, _your responsibility_, _Sammy_, but he doesn't need to, "vulnerable in ways you're not. When we settle in the fall, she can have her own room again."

Dean's not sure he can hold out that long, but he says, "Yes, sir," because he knows the conversation is over.

*

Another town, another haunting, another salt and burn, lather, rinse, repeat. Dean's only way of keeping track these days is the length of time between Sam's awkward attempts at seduction, which are harder and harder to dodge, and her sulks afterward, when she's unsuccessful.

Dad doesn't notice much difference--she still complains when he makes her help dig graves, though she never learned from either him or Dean that women aren't capable of everything men are (and more, but Dad will never know about the supplementary sex talk Dean gave her when she was thirteen and too embarrassed to ask Dad)--but Dean could fill volumes on the vast varieties of Sam's sulks, and this one is directed at him, and is sort of a cross between, I'm not a kid anymore, and who needs you anyway? It makes his head hurt when they're together for too long, and lately, it seems like they're always together, but never in the way they really want to be.

He wishes Dad would settle on a new car, so he could ride alone in the Impala sometimes, Zeppelin cranked up loud and the wind in his hair, instead of riding shotgun in his own car because Dad's picky, and the last truck he had got mauled by a pissed off spirit bear up in Vancouver. He doesn't say anything, though. It's not his place.

Sam unbends a little when Dad starts up this annoying variation on the memory game they play sometimes; it was originally designed to teach her and Dean the names (in both English and Latin) and functions of the herbs and spices they use in hunting. It works better than flashcards and is a break from license plate bingo and punch buggy, but Dean stopped finding it fun when he was nine. He doesn't understand how they can spend so much time rattling off lists of obscure herb combinations, trying to stump each other--he'd never thought Dad was a geek, but Sammy must get it from _somewhere_\--but at least when they do it, they're not fighting. Dad looks downright smug the first time Sam actually wins, turns to Dean and says, "Your sister is one smart cookie," while Sam preens in the backseat like she's just won the lottery. Listening to them play that stupid game is almost worth it, just to see them both smiling at the same time.

*

"Come on, Dean! Race you!" have been Sam's favorite words since she could walk and talk, and that's one thing that hasn't changed with the onset of puberty and teenage rebellion. She's bouncing on the balls of her feet, flushed from the heat, hair out of her face for once, held back with an old red bandana.

He scrubs a hand through his sweaty hair and grins. "You think you can take me?"

Her answering grin is just as cocky. "I know I can."

"Goal post to goal post," he says, pointing down the field. "Loser has to clean the winner's weapons."

"You're on." They finish stretching (he's not watching the way she bends and twists, though he can feel her watching him, skin prickling under her regard), and then she says, "Ready, set, go," and takes off, arms and legs pumping.

She's tall for a girl, with long legs that eat up the ground when she runs, and she loves it, the one part of training Dad almost never has to order her to do. She's begged to run track at every high school she lands at, but so far, Dad's said no every time. Dean thinks he might have to take her side next time she asks, convince Dad it's a viable alternative to the wind sprints and PT they do for him.

Dean's never been a big fan of running for its own sake--he can run with the best of them, for his life or the ninety feet between bases on a baseball diamond, but he doesn't get the big Zen high from it that Sam does. He gets that from shooting, from hunting, from looking down the sights and pulling the trigger on some evil thing that needs killing, from knowing he's saving some family from the hell his has been through. But he runs now, for exercise, sure, but also for Sam, pushing her the way Dad pushes him, giving her something to strive for, someone to beat.

And now it gives them both a way to work out some of the tension built up between them.

Lately, she's been winning as often as he has, and this time it's by more than a few inches, which makes her unbearable.

"Again," he says, sucking down a few breaths, cutting her off in mid-boast. She nods and sets herself. He can smell her, vanilla lotion and sweat and Flex shampoo. It's distracting, and he doesn't get a good jump, knows he's lost thirty yards in, comes in a full five yards behind her this time.

"You didn't get a good start," she says, rubbing beads of sweat off her upper lip with the back of her hand, and he has to stop himself from leaning in and licking at her mouth. She grabs her left ankle, then her right, stretching her quads, lean muscle shifting under smooth, tanned skin, and he licks his own lips, looks away. "Again."

He forces himself to concentrate this time, locks in on the in-out of his breathing, the furious, methodical pumping of arms and legs, the slap and push of his feet against the grass. This time, he wins by an arm's-length, and he grins at her, triumphant.

"Can't win 'em all, Sammy."

She's panting now, chest heaving with exertion, and the rueful disappointment on her face twists into anger at his words. She steps closer, laying her hands flat against his sweat-soaked t-shirt, and shoves him.

"Did you let me win?"

"What?"

She shoves at him again, against the goalpost, the metal hot against his back, her breasts warm and soft against his chest, though the rest of her is stiff with anger, her fingers fisted in the damp material of his shirt.

"Did. You. Let. Me. Win?"

He straightens up, looks down at her from his four-inch height advantage. "I stopped _letting_ you win at anything when you were ten, _Sammy_."

He grabs her shoulders, planning to shove her away, but he doesn't. Runs his thumbs along the soft skin of her upper arms instead, then moves his hands up to trace her collarbones, brushing at the drop of sweat sliding down her neck.

All the fight goes out of her; she melts against him, hands uncurling and sliding up to clasp around the back of his neck, drawing his head down to hers. The kiss is soft, tentative, brush of lips and whisper of breath, and it still sets heat sparking under his skin, fierce and hungry and so different from the humid press of air or the tight burn of exercise.

He runs his fingers through her sweat-damp hair, sending the bandana fluttering to the ground, forgotten, tightens his hold to dip her head back so he can kiss her again, teasing her with the quick flick of his tongue against her lips. She presses closer with a needy little whimper that makes him ache.

"Hey, you two, get a room."

They spring apart, still breathing heavily. Sam's face is flushed with embarrassment, lust, and anger, which is, thankfully, directed not at him but at the kid with the soccer ball who's just interrupted them.

"Are you done?" the kid asks, tossing the ball from one hand to the other as his friends join him.

She reaches down, picks up her bandana, and shoves it into her pocket. "It's all yours," she says, walking away, head held high.

One of the older boys lets out a wolf whistle, and Dean glares at him before he follows.

They jog back to the motel in silence, cooling down, though Dean's still wound tight, need skittering through his veins like spiders on the bathroom wall when the lights go on. The car's not in the spot in front of Dad's room, and he barely has time to close the door before Sam's pushing him up against it, all exploring hands and hot, wet mouth on his skin, hungry in a way he shouldn't understand but does, completely, down to the soles of his feet and the marrow of his bones. He wraps her hair, dirty blonde bleached pale gold by a summer in the sun and now dark with sweat, around his fingers, tugs her head back so he can lick her throat, tasting salt, skin, and lotion--not the Johnson's baby lotion he still buys for her when he does the shopping, but some vanilla stuff she started wearing when she started caring about girl things.

She grabs hold of his hair, tight, nails scraping bluntly across his scalp because there isn't a lot to grab, yanks him back up for a hard, hot kiss, all teeth and tongue, not gentle at all. She's shaking a little in his arms as he walks her back to the bed, desperate and gasping when he breaks the kiss, pupils blown and voice ragged when she says, "Dean, please." And there's no way he can resist that.

He skates his hands over her arms, her breasts, the toned muscles of her legs. He finds the smooth, untouched skin on the inside of her thigh, then slips his fingers beneath the soft material of her running shorts, the elastic of her underwear. She doesn't give him time to hesitate, arches up into his touch and says it again, "Dean, please."

She's wet and hot and responsive to every brush and thrust of his fingers, panting harder than she did during the races they just ran, muscles tensing as she gets close. He leans back so he can watch her face, flushed and intent, mouth slack as she gasps out soft little noises that make his cock ache in anticipation of what she might sound like when he's buried deep inside her. Her eyes flutter closed, though she keeps trying to open them.

"I've got you," he murmurs, leaning close again, mouth against her ear, free hand brushing her cheek gently. "It's okay, Sammy. It's all gonna be okay." It's not a lie if he believes it, and right now, he _does_, he _has to_. "Just come for me now."

And then he hears it, just barely hears it over the fucking hot sounds Sam's making, the rumble of the Impala, so familiar as to not even stand out.

"Oh, _fuck_." He jumps up, and Sam's eyes snap open in protest. "Dad."

"Oh, fuck!" She bolts into the bathroom on shaky legs, and slams the door, leaving him to face Dad alone.

Dad bangs into the room a few seconds later, rare smile on his face. He must have found something new to hunt.

"Pack it up, Dean. We're heading out as soon as you're done."

He keeps his back turned, tries to will his erection away, though he can hear the shower running and he knows, he _knows_, she's in there finishing what he started. He wishes he were, too.

Instead, he forces himself to pay attention as Dad tells him about the possibility of a phantom train in Harpers Ferry. He snaps, "Yes, sir," at the right moments, absorbs the information almost without thinking about it, second nature to file away everything the man says, knowing it will appear in his mind when he needs it most. He doesn't seem to have anything filed away regarding wanting to fuck his own sister, though, can't even imagine Dad's white-hot fury if he ever found out Dean had even thought about thinking about it, let alone laid hands or lips on her. Knows he'd be dead and buried, bones salted and burned, if Dad ever caught wind of what he's thinking, what he's doing. What he's already _done_.

He's packing, trying to ignore how his right hand still smells of Sam, when she comes out of the shower, flushed and clean, her hair already forming into frizzy ringlets around her head from the humidity. She's wrapped in a tiny, threadbare motel towel, which barely covers her from armpit to ass, and practically scampers across the floor to the dresser. She digs around in the drawer for a second and finds what she's looking for, then grins at him, cruel and mocking, lacy scraps that pass as girl's underwear clutched in her fingers, and when the fuck did Dad start allowing her to wear that stuff instead of the big old granny panties he'd been buying five to a pack at Wal-Mart for years?

It's his turn to slam into the bathroom, which is still steamy and smells of Sam's vanilla lotion. He takes a lukewarm shower and jerks off, resolutely not thinking about her, though the smell of the soap and shampoo makes that difficult, because everything in there--everything everywhere--reminds him of Sam.

It's not particularly satisfying, because it's not what he really wants, and what he wants, he can't have, shouldn't even be thinking of, and he can't ever escape from it, from her. Wouldn't want to even if he could.

Basically, he thinks, as he slides into the front seat of the Impala, he's fucked.

For once, Sam doesn't complain at all about leaving, curls up in the backseat with her book--something about the Black Plague this time--and hums happily to herself until Dean jams Motorhead into the tape deck.

She's asleep when they arrive in Charles Town, but it's not that late, just after eleven. He half carries her to the bed, buries his face in her hair for a brief moment, then tucks her in, kisses her forehead when he's sure she's out of it enough not to know. He stops at the door to toss her flip-flops, which had fallen off in the car, into the room.

He looks at his father, doesn't even ask this time, just tips his head towards the door. Dad nods, lets him go to find the nearest bar, the nearest pool game, the nearest girl who isn't related, and he laughs thinly to himself at the jokes he used to make about West Virginia weddings.

He knows exactly what he needs and he finds it pretty quickly. One beer, one shot of Jack, and one tiny, stacked blonde bent over in the ladies room, bracing herself against the ugly yellow sink while he fucks her. Doesn't bother to learn her name, because he won't remember it in the morning. All that matters is that she's not Sam. The world is full of girls who aren't Sam, girls who say yes (_yeah, sugar, yeah, just like that_), and it's okay, not like Sam, who says yes to him when she shouldn't, knowing that to her he can't ever say no.

He makes it back to the motel by two, can still smell the blonde--Lucy? Lacey? Fucked if he knows. Fucked anyway, good enough to make him sleepy, make him forget for a while, and that's what he'd gone out for, _so consider this mission a success, Winchester._\--on his skin.

He's sitting on the bed, unlacing his boots, when Sam says, "Dean?" He looks over to see her sitting up in bed, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them.

"What are you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep." She shrugs. "Slept in the car too long, I guess."

He nods, but the guilt is already starting. She doesn't sleep well when you're not there.

"Go back to sleep, Sammy."

She huffs, and he can tell she's annoyed--it's like a knot of tension at the base of his skull when she's angry at him, only loosens when she finally wears out, gives up, gets mad at Dad, which is a knot of tension in his left shoulder, up high, steady on since she turned twelve and decided she wanted to be normal, whatever the fuck that means.

Even in the darkness he can see the stubborn set of her jaw, the tight line of her lips, holding back questions she wants to ask but won't. Maybe she's reading the answers in the loose-limbed way he moves, the scent of whatever her name was on his skin.

"Fuck you," she answers, yanking the covers to her chin and turning her back to him.

He closes his eyes, because hurting her is the last thing he wants to do, but this is a cleaner kind of hurt than the other, isn't it? Fucked if he knows that, either. He's too shagged out to deal with it all now.

"Whatever."

But he lies awake until she goes back to sleep. The even sound of her breath finally lulls him to sleep, too, as the sky begins to lighten.

*

The phantom train turns out to be some local teenagers having a laugh, scaring the crap out of the late-summer tourists, one last big prank before school starts again. Dad growls about wasted time, wasted money, slams out of the room like he's going to hunt those brats down and salt and burn their bones instead, though Dean knows he's just going to the bar across the street.

The last thing Dad says before walking out the door is, "Look after your sister," and Sam grins at Dean in a way that makes his belly clench in fear, scarier than any ghost or ghoul he's ever faced. She doesn't complain about having a babysitter anymore, and on some level it makes him want to laugh, because it's not like he wouldn't have tried seducing a hot babysitter if he'd ever had one, and as much as she'd like to deny it, Sammy's just as much a Winchester as he is.

"I'm sure we'll have fun," she says as Dad swings the door shut.

Dean braces himself, but she just pulls out a deck of cards.

"Poker?"

He pops open a Rolling Rock and sits down cross-legged on her bed. "Okay. I'll deal first."

She grins and snags a sip of his beer before handing over the deck of cards.

They play for a couple of hours--seven card stud and five card draw, matchsticks and silver bullets standing in for chips, which stand in for money they don't have.

He wins pretty steadily, though she scores a nice hand or two along the way, and he lets her drink some of his beer when she does.

"I'll see your silver bullets," she says when he's on his third beer, "and raise you..." She looks down at the small pile of matches she has left, and smiles. "A shirt."

"What?" He can't have heard that right.

"A shirt." She pulls her t-shirt over her head, drops it into the pot. Her plain cotton bra--and thank fuck she's wearing one today--is very white against her tanned skin, and her hair is tousled and shining gold like a halo around her head. There's a light pink flush in her cheeks that could be from the heat or from embarrassment or, probably, both. "If I win, I get my shirt back, and you have to take yours off. If you win, well, I've already taken my shirt off, so I'd say it's pretty much a win for you either way, isn't it?"

He swallows hard. "That's not how it works."

She shrugs, and he forces himself to keep looking at her face. "House rules," she says.

She's got a full house, queens over sevens, to his straight, and she grins at him when he pulls his t-shirt off.

"Dude. That's more like it."

He throws the shirt at her and it hits her in the face. She holds it there for a second, inhales, and he freezes at the soft sound of her breath catching.

"Aren't you going to put your shirt back on?" he asks, voice hoarse.

Her smile is slow and predatory, and it makes his belly clench again, but this time, not in fear. "I'm comfortable like this."

He knows he should argue, should tell her to get dressed right the fuck _now_, Samantha, but he doesn't. He doesn't _want_ to.

Two more hands, and she's undoing the buttons on her jean shorts, peeling them down long, tanned legs before he can stop her.

"I call," she says, dropping them into the pot. Like the bra, her bikini bottom is plain white cotton, nothing intentionally seductive about it, but he can see the shadow of her cunt, the faint line of hair trailing down her abdomen leading to it. He swallows hard, keeps his eyes on his cards.

"This is a really shitty idea."

"I've shown you mine, big brother. Time for you to show me yours."

He lays down his cards, trying to pretend that's all she means. "Two pair--aces and eights." Dead man's hand, and ain't that the truth?

She fans her cards out slowly, grin curling over her face. "Four nines. Read 'em and weep. Or strip, as the case may be." When he doesn't move she says, "Don't punk out on me now, Dean." He clenches his jaw, because she knows exactly how to push his buttons, and okay, that's a line of thought he wants to cut off before it goes places it shouldn't, but he can't when she continues, "I'd be happy to help if the concept of undressing is giving you trouble." She's already moving across the bed, those long fingers so good at picking locks easily flicking open the buttons on his fly, and he forces himself to hold still under her touch.

"Sam." He means it as a warning, but his voice is low and raw, full of everything he wants from her and shouldn't have.

She looks up at him, the sheer need in her eyes making his breath catch in his throat. She reaches up and presses her thumb to his lower lip, pulling it down slightly.

The moment stretches out endlessly, and he tells himself that he can control this, can make it into another lesson for her. Tells himself that the line he's crossing can be redrawn, slightly over the edge into fucked up, and isn't that where they've been living anyway since Mom died?

Slowly, he darts out his tongue to taste the pad of her thumb, salt and Sam, as familiar and strange to him as she is. He sucks her finger into his mouth, watching as her eyes widen, and listening as her breath hitches. With a soft wet sound, he releases her thumb, and reaches out to cup her cheek gently, tip her face up to his so he can kiss her.

He tastes beer and heat as he slides his tongue over hers, need firing in his veins as she climbs into his lap without breaking the kiss. He can feel how wet she is, and it makes his dick, half-hard since she took off her shirt, twitch.

She's all awkward movement, unsure where to put her arms and legs, and he soothes her wordlessly, strokes his hands down the soft skin of her arms, pressing forward so she's on her back against the pillows, legs wrapped around his hips, the cards scattering beneath them, forgotten.

She traces a path over his skin with blunt fingernails, laughing with breathless delight when the muscles of his stomach jump under her touch, and looking at him with wide-eyed awe that turns into calculation when he growls low after she presses her palm to his cock before he moves her hand away.

He doesn't bother to unhook her bra, just shoves it up so he can touch her breasts without any fabric between them, loving the way they feel, small and warm and firm in his hands.

"I know you like big tits," she whispers, "and I'm not--I don't--"

He cuts her off with a ruthless kiss, then dips his head down to lick at her peaked nipples. "Don't need more than a handful," he murmurs into the soft skin between her breasts, though his hands look too large and alien on her body as he touches her. "Perfect just the way you are, Sammy."

She looks skeptical, so he spends some time showing her just how much he likes her breasts, licking and sucking until she's shaking and begging for more. She arches beneath him, her hands clutching at his shoulders and her nails digging into his skin, her breath coming in short stuttering gasps that sound like his name.

She moans softly in protest when he finally moves on, sliding his lips down the smooth plane of her stomach to dip his tongue into her bellybutton, kiss the mole beside it. She giggles then, and runs her fingers through his hair.

He moves down the bed, fingers tracing words he'll never say on the soft, unmarked skin of her thighs, following with his lips, his tongue. He can smell her, breathes in deep and exhales onto sensitive skin, but doesn't even make a move towards taking her underwear off yet. He teases her with kisses and nips along the soft flare of her hip, the tender flesh of her belly.

"Dean, please," she says, squirming. "I want--" She tries to maneuver herself into position, tries to direct his kisses with her hands in his hair.

He swallows hard, trying to keep control, and laughs against her belly. "You can't say it, you're probably not old enough to do it."

"Bastard," she mutters, hands tightening in his hair, enough to cause a short burst of pain. "Lick me," she says, and he looks up, meets her gaze, smiles at the way she's blushing, proud of the way she doesn't look away when she's asking for what she wants. "Can't stop thinking about it," she whispers, and he almost loses it right there, has to reach down and squeeze the base of his cock for just a second, because he's been thinking of it, too. "Your mouth, and--"

He hooks his fingers under the elastic and pushes her panties down and off, then slides his hands up the length of her legs, thumbs coming to rest in the creases where they join her body. He licks his lips at the sight of her, dark hair curling over swollen pink flesh, and strokes his fingers over the wet folds of her cunt, hungry to touch and smell and taste. Every sound and movement she makes hits his bloodstream like whiskey; he pays close attention, learning this the way he's learned everything else about her, because it's his job to make her happy, and this is just one more way to do that.

He flicks his thumb across her clit and she moans, hands clenching in his hair hard enough to sting.

"Wait," he says, sitting up. "Wait."

She raises herself up on her elbows, eyes wide and dazed but mouth twisting in annoyance. "What the fuck?"

He slides down off the bed to kneel at the foot of it, and eases his jeans down over his hips a bit to get comfortable and still be able to stroke his dick if he needs to. Then he wraps his hands around her knees and pulls until her ass is at the edge of the bed and her legs are draped over his shoulders.

"Better this way," he tells her with a grin.

"But now I can't see you," she answers, pouting.

That surprises him even as it sends another jolt of heat to his dick. "You want to watch?"

"I told you, I've been imagining it forever."

He has to take a deep breath before he can answer, and his voice is ragged when he says, "Stay up on your elbows, just like that."

He uses his thumbs to spread her open, and even that touch makes her gasp and shimmy. When he dips his head to lick her, she moans again and presses up against his mouth. He's surrounded by her--her taste in his mouth and her scent in his nose, and the feel of her under his tongue and his fingers. She's the only thing he can see, the whole of his horizon--she's the ocean and he's drowning in her. It's the best thing that's ever happened to him, and he wants to make it the best thing that's ever happened to her.

She's a talker, though she's not making much sense at the moment, and the sound is muffled anyway, but he knows what she means, knows when she's close, and knows how to make it good for her, her whole body shaking as she comes under his mouth, her body clenching hard around his fingers, and then he gets her off again before she's even finished coming down from the first time.

"_God_," she breathes, and he laughs. He loves the surprised, satisfied look on her face; it amazes him that he can do this to her, make her feel like that.

He licks his lips, thinks he'll be tasting her forever, already wants to taste her again. "No, just me." He slides back up onto the bed to kiss her, and she makes a face.

"What are you--" Her voice is slow, hazy, and he shakes his head and smiles.

"Trust me," he whispers against her mouth, and she does. Of course, she does, though he knows she shouldn't, not after what he's just done. But she lets him kiss her, learns the taste of herself on his tongue.

"Huh," she says when he eases back.

He grins. "Yeah."

She curls up against him, and he can see the fact that he's still mostly dressed register on her face. She reaches down to touch him, and he knows he should stop her, shouldn't let her do it, but when her warm hand curls around his cock, draws him out of his briefs, he can't help thrusting into it.

She's tentative at first, and her exploration nearly kills him, fingers sliding up and down, learning the feel of him.

"Sam," he growls, wrapping his hand around hers, holding it still.

"Show me," she says, more interested than she's been in anything he's had to teach her in ages, looking at him like he's one of her books, or some kind of equation to be solved, frown of concentration between her eyebrows.

"We shouldn't," he manages, because _fuck_, he really wants to.

She laughs, whole body shaking with it. "We already did, dumbass." She starts stroking him again, harder now, learning what he likes from how his body responds, from his hand guiding her instead of stopping her. She's always been a quick study. It doesn't take long, tension building and breaking as he comes, spurting over their hands and bodies, pearly white against the sleek, tanned skin of her belly.

"Wow," she says when he's done, running her fingers through the mess he's left on her skin and then putting them in her mouth, curious. He swallows hard, knowing that image will be featuring in his fantasies from now on. She opens her mouth to say something else, but he leans in, kisses her instead, long and slow, everything a goodbye kiss should be, because they can't do this again, even if they'll never really say goodbye, the two of them entangled like the taste of his come and hers now on his tongue.

He pulls away, brushes the backs of his fingers against her cheek, and she grabs his hand.

"Whatever stupid thing you're about to say," she says, "don't."

He jerks his hand free. "Sam--"

"Just don't, okay." Her face is stormy, and he turns away so he doesn't have to see her get upset, reaches for the box of tissues on the night table between the beds and starts cleaning her off, as if he can wipe away what they've done, but she grabs his hand again and squeezes tight. "You're the one person I trust, the one person who's never going to hurt me. So don't give me some stupid bullshit about how you're sorry, and we shouldn't have, and can't ever again, because you're not, and we did, and we can."

He shakes his head. "You keep saying you want to be like other people--"

She doesn't let him finish. "And you keep telling me we're not, and I just have to suck it up." She takes a deep breath and shoves her other hand through her tangled hair, holding his gaze with wide, serious eyes. "Well, if I have to suck it up and accept that, then you have to accept this, and stop pretending. Don't lie to me like I'm one of the skanks you fuck and leave, who doesn't even know your real name. I'm your sister, and I know you, and all I have right now is what you give me." Her voice is low, serious. Heartbreaking. "So, please, Dean, give me this."

Her face is all scrunched up like she's trying not to cry, and he's never had any defense against her anyway. He pulls her into his arms and strokes her hair. Her head is pressed against his chest, and he hopes she can hear his heart beating, because he has no other response. It's not true, and he, at least, knows it, but because she believes it is, he does, too. He can feel her breath on his skin, warm and moist, in time with his own, and silently asks for forgiveness.

He doesn't know how long they sit there like that, but finally she pushes away and says, "Okay, ew. I really need to take a shower."

He laughs, a little shaky, and lets her go.

While she's showering, he cleans up the room, putting the matches and bullets back in their boxes. He's on his hands and knees, reaching for the queen of hearts that's wedged beside the night table, when he realizes the cards are marked. He sits back on his heels and starts laughing again. She's definitely a Winchester to the bone.

*

It becomes another game they play, something fun to while away the time, and more dangerous than the games they played as kids.

Dad takes them with him more often than not these days--Sam isn't enthusiastic, but she keeps her complaints to a minimum, too busy trying to grope Dean whenever she can get away with it to fuss at Dad about hunting.

If it weren't so weird, it'd be almost unbearably sappy, the kind of thing they show in montages in the chick flicks she makes him watch with her, but Dean doesn't complain. He loves the feel of her body beneath his hands and mouth, the sounds she makes when he's got his fingers sliding in and out of her, the taste of her on his tongue, the way she says his name when she comes. And he loves holding her afterward, curling his body around hers and keeping her safe in the darkness, feeling her heart beat under his hand, though she isn't much for cuddling, and tends to squirm away when he's asleep.

It's harder once the school year starts up again. Dad buys himself a truck and finds them a decent apartment in a not-bad part of town not too far from Sam's high school, though it only has two bedrooms; Dean is supposed to be sleeping on the pullout couch in the small living room, but he ends up in Sam's room whenever Dad's away. Dean offers to go with him, but even though Sam is perfectly capable of taking care of herself for a few days, Dad rarely takes him up on it, says she needs someone around, just in case. Dean hates the words just in case, tries to throw them back in Dad's face, says he wants to be at his back, _just in case_, but Dad shakes his head.

"If something happens, it's better for you to be with Sam. She can't lose us both, Dean."

And he can't argue with that.

Just like he can't argue with Sam, though he has it all mapped out in his head, the territory he's allowed to trace with fingers and lips and tongue--using everything he's learned since the first time he kissed Lisa Figueroa when he was thirteen to make Sam come apart in his arms--and the things he's not going to do, and not going to let her do for him, the spots on his mental map marked "here be monsters," and not the kinds of monsters that can be killed with silver or salt.

She wakes him with kisses, mouth moving hot and wet over his neck and chest, making the muscles in his belly jump. He stops her when she gets to the waistband of his boxer-briefs, though, wraps his fingers in her hair and pulls her up for a long, lazy kiss. He lets her jerk him off, the pleased concentration on her face making him feel as good as the firm strokes of her hand and the laughing, open-mouthed kisses she presses to his face.

It's still all so new to her, so it takes her a while to realize that he distracts her whenever she brushes against his boundaries, but she does figure it out--she's always been the smart one--and their game takes on a competitive edge, same as every other game they've ever played, and this time, he's not so sure he's going to win.

By early October, they're settled in Mobile. Sam's fitting in pretty well, already has a few friends, and has made the varsity track team. It was harder to convince Dad to let her try out than it was for her to make the team, but he finally caved when Dean pointed out it could replace early morning PT sessions none of them really enjoyed.

She heads out for school early and comes home late, and since she seems fairly content (Dean's not looking forward to the first time a hunt conflicts with a meet, but so far things have worked out in their favor, and he isn't one to look for trouble, at least, not within the family), Dad doesn't kick up a fuss. He and Dean are both working shifts at the local mechanic's, a friend of a friend of Bobby's, who was willing to take them on without too many questions once they proved they knew their way around cars.

The weather is still warm when Dad gets a call from Pastor Jim about a mysterious house fire in Valdosta. He refuses to take Dean with him, says it's only a few hours' drive each way and he doesn't want to leave Sam alone, or take her anywhere near the place if it is the thing they've been hunting for so long. He heads out early on Wednesday morning, promising to be back by Friday.

His last words, as always, are, "Look out for Sammy."

Dean nods. "Of course, Dad." He doesn't have to be told--hasn't had to be told since he was a kid; the words are carved into every molecule of his being--but this is yet another Winchester routine that's hardened into ritual over the years.

That night, he comes home after work and gets in the shower, washing sweat and grease away, too tired to cook and wondering if they should order pizza or Chinese.

He's washing the shampoo out of his hair when Sam slips around the curtain, goes right to her knees before he can say anything, water already slicking her hair back from her forehead and sliding down her skin in rivulets, making him want to follow its path with his tongue. Her hands are sure--she's learned what he likes well enough now, firm and fast and a little rough, with a twist on the upstroke--but her mouth is tentative. She swipes her tongue along the head of his cock and he can't bite back a soft grunt of pleasure, because he's imagined this for a while, even as he's stopped her every other time she's tried.

She's sloppy, obviously doesn't know what she's doing, and he feels a fierce thrill of possession he wants to believe is relief, but he's always been shitty at lying to himself. He's glad he's the first to do all of this with her, wants to mark her as his and keep her safe from the rest of the world, from guys like him who will only use her and forget her name the next morning. The irony is not lost on him, even as he drops his head forward so he can watch her full pink lips slide up and down the length of his cock, brow furrowed in concentration, like going down on him is another puzzle to solve, and the answer will make her happy, ease those lines away.

He smoothes back her hair and cups her cheek, trying hard not to give in and fuck her mouth the way his body wants to, but he can't help thrusting a little into the wet heat of it. She makes a small gagging sound, and he says, "Breathe through your nose." His voice is rough, even as he tries to be gentle.

She hums in response, and he feels the vibration shiver down his spine and echo in his bones, hips jerking again, pushing him deeper. It feels so good, as good as he'd imagined, all those times he promised himself he wouldn't let her do this--_be_ this--for him, heat and need spiraling high and tight inside him. He tries to warn her, pull her off when he knows he's going to come, but she smacks his hand away and swallows what she can before she lets him slide out of her mouth and spatter her with come as the shower washes them clean. He wants to pull her up, lick the inside of her mouth, maybe return the favor, but as soon as she's clean, she slips away, satisfied smile curving her lips.

He leans back against the cool tile and thinks about redrawing the lines on his map.

When he gets out of the shower, she's on the phone ordering pizza as if nothing's changed, but then she turns and gives him that smile again, her hair damp and frizzing around her face, and he wonders if he should just throw out the map altogether, because he's in unknown territory now--has been for a while, if he's honest about it--and there's no going back.

*

"I missed the track meet for your stupid hunt, and I didn't even complain," (much, Dean thinks), "and now you won't even let me go to Allison's sweet sixteen? That is so unfair," Sam shouts.

Dad clenches his jaw and says, "I told you, if it was just a regular party, that'd be fine, but we can't afford a fancy dress and shoes, plus a gift, Sam. Stop asking."

"You commit credit card fraud all the time, Dad. So don't tell me we can't afford it."

"That's for hunting, not frivolous crap like a dress you'll never wear again and an expensive gift for some girl you hardly know."

"That is such bullshit! You never let me do anything fun. I hate you!" She storms out of the kitchen and slams the door to her bedroom.

Dad rubs his hand over his eyes, jaw tightening, and Dean says, "She doesn't mean it."

Dad gives him a look that can't mean anything good. "She can go to practice," and Dean holds in a sigh of relief at that, because it means he won't have to get up extra-early to run with her, "but you pick her up every day and bring her straight home right afterwards. No stops at the library or the pizzeria or anything else. No hanging out with her friends." He gets up, stands outside her bedroom door, and raises his voice. "Nothing but practice, homework, and chores for a week, Samantha." There's a muffled thump from behind the door. "You wanna push me, young lady? 'Cause I can make you way more miserable than you can make me." Which is a lie, of course, and Dean knows it, even if Sam doesn't. "Now come out of there and set the table. It's time for dinner."

There's another thump, and then the bedroom door swings open and Sam shoves past them, jaw set and eyes bright. "It's not fair," she mutters, slamming mismatched silverware and glasses onto the table. Dad goes into his own bedroom, shuts the door.

"Life isn't fair, princess," Dean says, dumping dry pasta into boiling water.

"Easy for you to say. You get to do whatever the hell you want."

"Being older has its privileges. When you're my age--"

"I'll be in college, and far away from here." She says it like it doesn't mean anything, like it's an established fact, like the sky is blue and water is wet, but it makes his heart stop for a second, and when it starts again, the world's tilting on its axis in a way it never has before. "I don't know why you didn't go, get out while the getting was good." She shakes her head and sucks her teeth. She has no fucking clue what she's talking about.

"Yeah, right," he says when he's sure he won't say anything too revealing. "I suppose college might have its good points. Lots of beer and hot chicks looking to get laid." The plate clatters on the table as if she's dropped it, and he turns to look. She's glaring at him, angry and hurt, and he tries to look innocent. "What?"

"You're disgusting," she says, practically snarling, and she looks like she's ready to stomp off again when Dad comes out of the bedroom and sits down at the table.

"Stop teasing your sister," he says, with that you're older and you ought to know better tone Dean's been hearing for as long as he can remember.

"Yes, sir," he answers, perky enough to be offensive, but Dad lets it go. Sam scowls at him, face all scrunched up unhappily. He stirs the macaroni as Dad quizzes Sam on Latin, and things are normal, or as normal as they ever get.

Dean knows it can't last though.

He picks Sam up each day after practice, sits in the car and watches her stretch and run, listens to her laughter floating on the cool breeze when one of the other girls says something to her, and she glances over and catches sight of him. She waves, and he nods in acknowledgement, and the girls start laughing again, shooting him assessing glances. There are one or two he definitely wouldn't mind getting to know better, but Sam doesn't bring any of them over when she comes to the car. Instead of going around to the passenger side, she bends over and kisses him, hand cupping his cheek and tongue slick and sweet in his mouth.

He pulls back, startled. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She scoots around to the passenger side and gets in. "I told them you were my boyfriend."

"Sam." He manages to fit a lot of this is the worst idea ever into his voice.

"No, no, Dean, it's cool. This way we can do whatever we want and nobody has to know." She curls her fingers in his shirt and leans in to kiss him again, hot and wet, and he can't stop himself from kissing her back hard, hungry for her mouth.

A wolf whistle reminds him that no, it really _is_ a terrible idea to make out with his sister in public (in private, too, a little voice in the back of his head whispers, but he ignores it), even if people don't know she's his sister.

He pulls back, licking his lips, which now taste like cherry lip balm, and why do girls always _do_ that? "You got a lot of homework?"

She shrugs. "I did most of it in study hall. I still have some reading for AP History, and a bunch of translations for Spanish, but that's it."

"You'll get it all done?" He doesn't know why he asks--he knows she will. She always does. He'd done his homework in school grudgingly, with Dad standing over him arms folded, immovable, ready to come down like the wrath of God if he didn't toe the line and get decent grades and keep people from noticing there was anything weird about the Winchesters. Sam does it all like it's a gift someone's given her; sometimes she even asks for extra, though why a girl who's never gotten anything but straight As needs extra credit, Dean can't understand. But he has to ask, and she has to say yes, because that soothes a tiny bit of the guilt he feels at disobeying Dad and not taking her straight home, just another ritual to ward off the bad things he knows are going to come out of this. Nothing really eases the guilt of what they do together, but he's gotten good at ignoring that when she's warm and soft in his arms.

Her voice is breathless when she answers, "Yeah."

He nods and eases the car into the shady area behind the track, and he's barely got the car in park when she climbs into his lap. She twines her arms around his neck and kisses him again. He runs his hands up under her shirt, brushes his fingers against the underside of her breasts, frustrated by the tight fit of the sports bra she wears for running; he tugs the straps down her arms so she can wiggle free of them, giving him access to her skin, warm and still damp with sweat from practice, nipples peaking under his palms.

She grabs his hand, puts it between her legs, and he can feel how hot and wet she is through her shorts. He rubs at her through the slick material and she moans into his mouth, grinding down against his fingers. She's flushed and beautiful like this, and it's so easy to forget why it's a bad idea, and so hard to stop, to push her away before he slides his cock inside her and fucks her the way he wants to, skin on skin and nothing in between--fucks her, and fucks everything up for good.

She comes with a soft sigh against his neck, body going stiff and then boneless, and he slides her off his lap, still hard and aching for his own release.

She reaches out, palms his erection through his jeans. "Come on, Dean, let me do this for you." Her voice is soft, breathless, seductive.

He swallows hard, pushes her hand away. "We have to get home. We're already late, and Dad--"

"He's not going to be home for another two hours."

"But he's expecting you to be home now."

"You act like everything he says is the word of God."

"He's trying to protect you. It's not the easiest job in the world."

She huffs, crosses her arms over her chest. "Whatever."

They ride home in what would be chilly silence, except Dean cranks the radio when "Pour Some Sugar On Me" comes on, feeling a small moment of triumph when Sam snorts and rolls her eyes. She glares out the window at the tract housing, and he wonders if she really wishes she lived in one of them, normal family with a normal life, college in two years, and a perfect boyfriend, and then forty years working nine-to-five. He can't even imagine it, mainly because he knows how easily it can all be taken away.

When they get home, she pushes past him into the house. She does her homework with a lot of huffing and sighing and slamming of textbooks.

He locks himself in the bathroom and jerks off, replaying their time in the car over again, and comes imagining what it would feel like to be surrounded by the slick heat of her body.

He thinks he knows a little something about wanting what he shouldn't have, and how it can only end badly, but that's not the kind of lesson Sam is willing to learn.

*

Sammy's just like Dad, can hold a grudge forever, and she holds this one for the rest of the week. They snipe at each other when they have to speak, and spend the rest of the time in cold silence. Dad gives him the whatever it is, work it out look, but Dean thinks anything he does will make it worse, one way or the other.

Not only does she not speak to him for three days, she avoids touching him, too, and he misses it--not the sex stuff (though if he's honest with himself, he does miss that), but the regular Sammy-stuff, like ruffling her hair and punching her arm, and all the shit she pretends she's too old for, but still secretly loves, like curling up together under the blanket with a bowl of popcorn and a bag of M&amp;Ms and watching _The Little Mermaid_\--he leers at the mermaids, and she sings along with the songs--when her homework is done.

Maybe this thing they've been doing has run its course, and he tells himself that's probably for the best, and now they can get back to how they used to be. She has enough shit to worry about hiding from the rest of the world without having to deal with this, too. Dean's never run from the truth in his life, but he still can't bring himself to name what they're doing. What they've done. Words--names--have power, and that's one word that can't be erased once it's said, one betrayal that can't be forgiven, so he tries to believe it's no betrayal at all.

*

He's at work that Friday afternoon, flirting with the hot blonde owner of a sweet little silver anniversary seventy-eight Corvette he's going to be working on, and she's saying, "Yeah, I inherited it from my Dad last year. He loved this car like it was his own flesh and blood, you know?" when his phone rings.

"Where the hell are you?" It's Sam, and she sounds pissed.

_Fuck_. He covers the phone with his hand and smiles at the blonde. "I'm sorry, Chrissy. I have to take this call. It's my kid sister." She gives him a sweet smile and leans back against the hood of her car, long legs crossed at the ankle. "I'm still at work, Sammy. Things have been a little hectic here since Dad left this morning." Dad's investigating rumors of a haunted shrimp boat in Bayou La Batre, and seemed relieved to escape the Forrest Gump jokes Dean's been making since he heard the news. He said he'd call for backup if it turned out to be more than a prank on the tourists. "I think I can wrap things up here in about half an hour. Can you hang around?"

Sam huffs and he can just imagine the expression on her face. "Whatever. I'll just catch a ride with Evan."

"Who the hell is Evan?"

"Allison's brother. It'll be fine."

"I don't know, Sam. I--" As usual, Dad's last words had been, Look out for Sammy, and that generally doesn't include letting her ride in cars with strange boys. And Dean knows that whatever Sam might think, her punishment is technically still in effect, even with Dad away. "Maybe you should wait--"

"Okay, he's here. Gotta go. Bye." And there's nothing but silence in his ear.

He turns and smiles at Chrissy, but his enjoyment in flirting with her isn't quite the same now. "Let's get a look at what you've got under the hood."

She leans forward, giving him a nice view of her tits, and puts a hand on his arm. "That sounds great."

"She's a beauty," he says when he's done checking out the engine. "Doesn't need much work at all."

"Why don't you buy me a drink, and we can talk about the kind of service I'm going to need?"

And he's going to say yes, is already picturing what she'll look like with his dick in her mouth, and resolutely not thinking about Sam, when his phone rings again.

Chrissy's mouth twists in amusement. "Little sister again?"

"Yeah." He flips open the phone, annoyed. "Hold on a second, Sam." He smiles at Chrissy, and maybe it's petty, poking Sam when she's already riled up, but he can't resist. He says, loud enough for Sam to hear, "Can I get a rain check on that drink?"

"Sure thing, sugar."

"Sugar?" Sam says when he puts the phone up to his ear. "You're so predictable. She's blonde, right? Big tits? Wants to fuck you?" Her voice is as corrosive as holy water. Score one for him this round.

"Watch your mouth, Sammy."

"Whatever. I'm home. I'm doing my homework. Nothing big and scary is going to get me while I'm here by myself so you can go f--"

"Hey, look at that, Sammy, you're breaking up. I'll be home in twenty minutes, and you better not be up to anything you can't explain to Dad when I get there, you hear me?"

She's sitting at the table, books spread out around her, when he walks in.

"Hey, it's Friday night. You don't have to do that shit tonight."

"If Dad calls and we have to go, I won't have time to do it before Monday morning, and I have a test to study for."

He nods. "Okay, that's true." He picks up the phone. "Pizza or Chinese? I'm starving."

"You could have just gone out with _Chrissy_." She spits the name like a curse. "I'm perfectly capable of spending a night by myself without being attacked by monsters or burning the house down."

He stares at her, surprised, and she seems to have realized what she's just said because she looks away, can't meet his gaze. She gathers up her stuff and mutters, "I'm not hungry," before going to her room and slamming the door.

He shakes his head, ends up making himself a meatloaf hero for dinner, and dozes on the couch, watching reruns of _Law &amp; Order_.

After a couple of hours, he's bored and starting to feel guilty. He should have been there to pick her up, or should have called her, at least. He should have checked out that Evan guy, made sure he isn't the kind of guy who puts the moves on his kid sister's friends.

If things hadn't been so weird this week, he would have done all of that. He would have dropped everything and brought her back to the garage. Something.

He gets up and goes to her room, knocks on the door. "Hey, you wanna play some Nintendo?" he says. She doesn't say anything. "Or we could get some ice cream or something." Still no answer. "Sammy? You okay in there? Just having a little private time?" He knocks again, worried now, and raises his voice. "Sammy?" When she still doesn't answer, he discovers she's actually locked the door. He forces it open, flimsy lock breaking easily under the weight of his foot.

The window is wide open, and Sam's not there.

"Son of a bitch."

He sticks his head out the window, but she's long gone. He does a quick survey of the room, fear nearly choking him, but her duffel is still in the closet, and everything--her clothes, her Walkman, her goddamn books--is still in place. So, not running away. He lets out a relieved breath.

Sneaking out to meet friends, then. Or that guy, Evan.

Fear resurfaces, and anger replaces relief, and he shoves at the pile of schoolbooks on her desk, knocking them to the floor with a crash.

It doesn't make him feel better.

"Think," he mutters. "Where do sixteen-year-old girls go on Friday nights?" The mall, or the movies, or their friends' houses. Shit. This is going to take hours.

He squats down to rifle through her books, hoping she's got a list of names and phone numbers somewhere, trying to remember the names of the girls she talks about, though she talks so much he tends to tune her out after the first few minutes, trusting the rise and fall of her voice to tell him how to respond, and when he should tune back in.

He flips through each book quickly, methodically, scanning her small, cramped handwriting for clues. And tucked in the back of her history textbook is a flyer, printed in garish color: Party at Darnell's, it screams in purple and green ink.

"I'm gonna kill her," he mutters, crinkling the paper in his fist. He smoothes it out, folds it up, and shoves it into his pocket.

He spends another twenty minutes driving around looking for the address, which is about twenty minutes too long, long enough to allow him to start imagining all the ways this can end badly for her. The place is down by the docks, an old warehouse in a neighborhood even he would think twice about walking around in after dark. So he's got the Glock hidden in his waistband when he pushes his way into the no-longer-abandoned warehouse.

The crappy music is turned up so loud he'd heard it as he'd turned the corner onto the block, and it's brain-melting once he's inside. He makes a mental note to add earplugs to his pockets for possible future use. Never know when they might come in handy. There's almost no light, just strobes and glow-sticks and black lights, scent of pot and cigarettes and sweat heavy in the humid air, smoke curling like ribbons in the darkness. There are kids all over the place, dancing, drinking, making out, and not just kids. He spots people who look his age, and older, which makes him even more nervous.

He pushes his way through the crowd, shaking free of the occasional hand that tries to stop him, ignoring the drinks offered as he passes, and that cranks his level of fear up another notch, even as he tells himself Sam's smart enough not to take a drink from someone else at one of these things.

When Dean finds her, she's leaning against the back wall of the cavernous room, hips canted and head tipped back, laughing up at some guy who's whispering in her ear, his arm braced against the wall by her head. Once Dean sees she's okay, his fear transforms completely into anger.

"Sam," he growls, reaching out and yanking her arm. She stumbles into him, and he wraps an arm around her waist, looks down to see she's wearing boots that come up just past her knees, with high, skinny heels. "_Jesus fucking Christ_." He glares at the guy, says, "Don't even fucking think about it."

He drags her into the nearest empty room, which is some kind of office, full of dusty bookshelves and old file cabinets, and slams the door behind them. The whole place is practically vibrating with bass, and he has to lean in and shout in her ear to be heard.

"What the fuck were you thinking?"

"Fuck you, Dean. I'm just trying to have some fun," she answers, shoving at him. He can smell beer on her breath. "I'm not a little kid. And you're not Dad."

He ignores that, because it's true, and yet Dad's not here and his words--Watch out for Sammy\--are burned into Dean's soul like a brand, and he can't fail at it any more than he already has. "You didn't drink anything you didn't pour yourself?"

"One Coors Light, right from the bottle." She shrugs one shoulder. "Only bottled beer they had. Opened it myself."

"You know what can happen to girls like you at parties like this, Sam?"

She rubs against him, like a cat looking to be petted, and wraps her arms around his neck. "Why don't you show me?" she says in a husky tone that goes right to his dick.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" But this time when he says it, his lips are against her ear, and it's easy, it's _so easy_, to suck her earlobe into his mouth, slide his lips down the length of her neck when she tips her head back to give him access, soft gasp escaping her lips, breath warm and beer-scented on his skin.

She laughs. She fucking laughs like it's no big deal. "I was thinking of you."

Anger and fear and need pulse through his veins like blood, and he pushes her up against the door, hands already sliding up under the short black skirt that leaves so much of her long, strong thighs bare. She gasps and arches into his touch when he cups her, hot and wet against his palm, tiny scrap of her underwear not interfering at all.

"C'mon, Dean," she says against his lips, then slips her tongue into his mouth to flutter along the roof of it, wrap around his tongue, make him forget who he is, and where, and why this is a bad idea. "You told me to ask for what I want, and I want you to fuck me," she says when he pulls away, hooks her left leg around his hip and tries to pull him closer, hands yanking his shirt out of his waistband. She finds the gun and raises her eyebrows.

He grabs it from her and shoves it into his jacket pocket. "This place is more dangerous than Dad's haunted shrimp boat."

Her fingers tighten on his shoulders. "You've got some nerve, lecturing me, after some of the shit you've pulled."

"It's different for girls."

"Don't hand me that bullshit. You taught me--"

He wants to shake her until her teeth rattle for being such a stubborn little brat. "It is, and you know it, too. I know it sucks, but it's true. You're the prey here."

"I can protect myself."

"Can you?" He shoves her back against the door again, harder this time, grinding into her, and the whimper she makes isn't about pain at all--her pupils are blown wide, and he can feel her nipples brushing hard and tight against his chest with each ragged breath she takes. He growls into her mouth, biting and sucking at her lips, her tongue. It's a brutal kiss, and she gives it right back to him, teeth and tongue meeting his in a way that makes his nerves sing with need.

He pushes at the stretchy material of her tank top to get at her breasts. She's not wearing a bra, which is good, because he doesn't think he has the patience to deal with one at the moment. He dips his head to lick and suck at her nipples, and she arches into his mouth, holds his head tight against her, nails digging into his scalp. She's talking. He can't hear her words because the goddamn music is too loud, but he can feel her chest rise and fall, the muffled hum of her voice vibrates through him, and he knows she's saying, Dean, please, Dean, because he'd know his name on her lips anywhere, at any time.

He slides a hand under her skirt again, yanks at the cheap thong that passes for her underwear. It comes off in his hand, no doubt leaving angry red marks on her skin. They both stare down at it until he shoves it into his pocket, on top of the gun. He kisses her again, breathing in her laughter, but it's not funny. He thinks of all the different things that could have gone wrong tonight, if he hadn't gotten here in time, if she'd taken a drink from a stranger, if...

Her hands on his fly abruptly derail that train of thought, and then she's shoving his jeans and his underwear down, curling her fingers around his cock. He thrusts into her hand; she thumbs the slit, then licks the precome off the pad of her thumb. He sucks in a breath, fumbles for the condom in his wallet like he's fifteen again and finally getting the chance to fuck Mary Alice Bradshaw on the ugly plaid sofa in her basement.

Sam's a step ahead of him, pulling a small foil packet out of the purse thing dangling from her shoulder, and he growls again, bites down hard on the flesh where her neck meets her shoulder, marking her, jealous of whoever it was she'd planned to use it with before he showed up. She moans a little, breathless, grinding against his thigh.

"They were giving them out at the door," she manages, tearing it open and rolling it on him with trembling, inexpert fingers. "Seemed rude not to take one."

He snorts in disbelief. "I see."

He hoists her up, wrapping her other leg around him, and pushes forward, the head of his cock sliding along the slick folds of her cunt, and she gasps. "Fuck, Dean." She shoves her hands up under his shirt, scrapes her nails down his back.

"That's the plan, Sammy." He knows, with the crystal clear certainty he gets when he's sighting some monster down the barrel of his gun, that if he does this now, there will be no going back, and if he doesn't, there's no going forward, no escape from this scenario playing out again and again until she finally sets her eyes on someone else. And as much as he'd like to believe that's what he wants for her, the sharp jolt of possessive anger he feels at the thought forces him to admit, if only to himself, that it's not.

He isn't gentle. He pushes inside her and doesn't stop until he's all the way in, ignoring her surprised gasp and the way she goes still in his arms.

"God, baby, you're so tight," he murmurs, thrusting into the tight, slick heat of her cunt, "so wet."

"All for you," she answers, pressing him closer with her feet against his ass, those heels digging into the backs of his thighs, edging the almost unbearable pleasure with just enough pain to make it sharpen into focus. He knows they're going to leave a mark, welcomes it. "Just for you."

His hands are tight on her ass, fingers digging into firm flesh like she's the only thing anchoring him to the earth, and he fucks her hard against the door, in time with the bass still pounding through the walls, his mouth hot and wet against her neck and jaw, and for one quick second he thinks this is the only way he can keep her safe, make sure she never leaves him.

She clings to him, nails scraping against his skin, teeth sharp against his neck, his jaw, before latching onto his lower lip, biting into soft, sensitive flesh and then licking the sting away.

Pleasure bursts like lightning under his skin, shivers down his spine and then out, as he loses his rhythm and thrusts erratically, whole world going white behind his eyes as she clenches her body around him, drawing him in deeper, her voice in his ear, shouting, "Dean, Dean, Dean," as he comes shuddering inside her, her name on his lips.

He presses his face to her neck, breathes in sweat and Sam and sex, and when he recovers, he realizes--"Fuck, Sam. You didn't--Christ, I can't believe I didn't make you come first."

She runs a hand through his sweaty hair, and laughs--he can feel it all the way down to his toes. "Man, I am never ever letting you forget that, either." She lowers her legs slowly, unsteady on her feet, but he's not ready to let her go just yet. They cling to each other for a few moments that feel endless and much too quick at the same time. He cups her cheek briefly, presses a warm kiss to her forehead and another to her lips, and then he pulls away.

He tosses the condom away and cleans himself up, the tips of his ears burning as he realizes she's watching him, fascinated, pink tip of her tongue poking out between red, saliva-slick lips.

"Nice boots," he says, to cover his embarrassment. "Where'd you get 'em?"

"Daphne lent them to me. I don't think I like the heels, though. They'd be a bitch to run in. I can barely walk in them."

"Boots like that are not made for walking."

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, God. You're so lame."

He grins at that, and slips an arm around her waist because she's wobbly on those heels, or maybe because she's just had sex for the first time, and he can't think about that right now, though he wants nothing more than to do it again, slow, this time, gentle, and oh God, how could he have--

She stumbles and grabs onto him, warm and soft at his side, looks up and gives him a grin, bright enough to light their way out of this place.

His ears are ringing and his clothes stink of pot and sex and he hopes fervently that he hasn't missed Dad's call, but when he checks his phone, there are no messages.

He walks her back to the car, one hand steady on her hip, the other in his jacket pocket, tight on the grip of his gun, but they make it without incident. He actually opens the door for her before going around to the driver's side, and she looks up at him in grateful surprise, but doesn't say anything.

They ride in silence for a few minutes, and he keeps glancing over at her. She's fidgety, and he realizes two things at once: her underwear is still in his pocket, and she's probably sore as hell.

Then she turns and grins at him, like she just got one over, and he says, "I'm not gonna tell Dad about you sneaking out, but don't think you're getting away with this."

"If that was your idea of punishment," she says, still grinning, "bring it on. It's way better than wind sprints or push-ups."

"I'm not joking."

"Neither am I." She shifts again, pulls at her skirt, which is made of some stretchy material that rides up when she moves, and he can see the long, strong muscles of her thighs. The memory of those legs wrapped around his hips, of coming deep inside her body, floods his veins with heat, and it's his turn to shift uncomfortably. The endless loop of streetlights washes over her face as they drive, and he can see the redness on her neck and chest where his stubble scraped her skin, the bruises blossoming where he marked her, had his mouth and hands and cock where no one else has ever been, and he was never meant to be.

His hands tighten on the wheel, and he takes a deep breath, tries to regain some control. She must sense the change in his mood, because she reaches out to touch him, and he flinches away.

"Don't--don't freak out on me, Dean. Please. I know it's weird, but that's us, right? Who we are. We do all the weird shit that normal people freak out about. This isn't any different."

She won't stop talking, throwing his own words back in his face, and he just wants her to shut up, wants her to leave him alone. Wants to pull over and fuck her again, until she's screaming his name like it's the only word she's ever known, feeling it the way he felt her name, her body, before.

He can't--won't--do that, so he takes refuge in anger, though even that isn't safe anymore. "What were you thinking?" he asks her for the third time, and they both know this time she has to answer. Rituals must be observed, and even Sam respects that.

"I wanted to make you mad. Make you jealous." She smiles. "And I did."

He shakes his head. "Jesus, Sam. What we did--what I did to you--"

"Not _to_ me, Dean. _With_ me. It's not wrong. I wanted it, I was right there with you all the way. Well, maybe not all the way." She smirks at him and he knows she's never going to let that go. But she's serious when she says, "You didn't--whatever you're thinking, you didn't hurt me. You'd never hurt me."

He wishes he could believe that the way she does. Makes himself believe it, because she does. Ain't that a change, he thinks, from when they were kids and she'd believed everything he told her with wide eyes and an eager smile and a Dean says like she was quoting the Bible.

When they get home, he tosses his jacket over a chair and helps her to her room. She looks at the busted lock on her door and the books scattered on the floor the way he left them, says shrilly, "You kicked down my door and went through all my stuff?"

It's easy enough to fall back into their natural rhythm; he lets their version of normality wash over him like a warm bath. "You snuck out of the house to go to a party in an abandoned warehouse. Don't even think you have the moral high ground here, princess."

She sinks down onto the bed, all fight gone out of her, unzips the boots, and kicks them off.

"Remind me to call Daphne and Allison in the morning, tell them I didn't get roofied and kidnapped or something," she says, pulling her socks off and rubbing at the arch of her left foot.

"Here, let me--" He sits down next to her, and she swings around, rests her feet in his lap. "Not like they were paying attention. If that's what your friends are like, maybe you should find some new ones. And don't roll your eyes at me."

"They didn't mean to--"

He shakes his head. "I don't want to hear it." He presses his thumbs into the ball of her foot, working slowly and surely to ease the pressure there from the heels she's not used to.

She sighs and flops onto her back, letting him take care of her. She wriggles a little when he brushes a particularly ticklish spot.

"God, that feels good," she murmurs as he rotates her ankle, slides his hand up her calf, half-hard from the feel of her skin under the pads of his fingers.

He shoots her a grin. "I'm the foot fucking master, and don't you forget it."

She giggles and scoots down the bed a bit, though the material of her skirt doesn't move with her, and now her legs are bare nearly to the tops of her thighs.

He swallows hard, fingers tightening on her calf. "You okay?" he asks, voice gone hoarse.

"Little sore," she answers, not even pretending not to know what he means. She leans up on her elbows now, straps of her tank top sliding down her arms, and smiles at him in invitation, sliding her foot along his thigh. "Wouldn't mind doing it again."

He clears his throat, tries to joke. "You need to be able to walk tomorrow."

"You really think that's gonna be a problem?"

"Hold on a sec."

He goes to the bathroom, wets down a washcloth with warm water, grabs a towel, and goes back to the bedroom, and stops dead in the doorway for a second, has to remind himself to start breathing again, because she's got her skirt off now, is sitting up and touching herself, curious. There's no blood on her thighs, and he breathes a soft sigh of relief about that.

"Hey," he says, "let me." He holds up the washcloth. He tries to be detached, the way he is when he cleans her wounds from hunting, or rubs her strained muscles from running, but he can't quite manage it, not when she's laid out before him like an undiscovered country, his own new world ready to be explored. Her hands open and close, fingers curling in the sheets, and she makes all sorts of hot little noises while he cleans and dries her off.

"Dean," she says, trapping his hand against her cunt with her own and thrusting against it, all slick warm heat and the promise of happiness. "Dean, please." And there's no amulet, no salt line or chalked sigil that can protect him from that. He doesn't want one that could.

He touches her softly, gently, everything he wasn't earlier, presses teasing little kisses down her body, swirls his tongue in her bellybutton while she giggles and squirms, her hands now stroking through his hair and over his neck like a blessing, her voice murmuring his name like a benediction.

"Gonna make it good for you this time, so good for you, baby," he whispers against the soft skin of her inner thigh, and she makes this broken, whimpering sound that sends a jolt of heat right to his dick.

He goes slow, using lips and tongue and fingers to make her moan and gasp, hips arching off the bed. When he looks up, she's got her shirt shoved up and is palming her breasts, eyes closed and face screwed up in intense concentration, taking what he gives her and begging for more with soft choking sounds that never quite spell out his name. He brings her to the edge and then over it, and she shakes and shudders and moans until she's spent, sprawled bonelessly, shamelessly, across her bed.

He brushes her sweaty hair back from her forehead, kisses her softly, every touch an apology, a request for the forgiveness she holds back from everyone else and finds so easy to give him, who deserves it least.

She curls into him, hands tangling in his shirt to keep him close, whispers, thank you against his neck, and something that might be love you over his heart--he's not sure, and she doesn't say it again, but he's not going to ask.

He holds her until she falls asleep, blissful, fucked-out smile on her face, and then goes back into the bathroom, jacks himself until he comes. He's slow to wash, wants to keep her scent on his skin as long as he can.

He's restless, last vestiges of adrenaline burning off now that he knows she's home and safe and asleep, that the biggest danger to her now--always--is him, and no one else. He's not used to sticking around after sex, but there's no place for him to go, and he wouldn't go even if there was. He's made his bed, and he's got to lie in it.

As he pulls the gun out of his jacket pocket, still wrapped in the ripped remains of Sam's underwear, he thinks, once again, that irony is a bitch.

*

He's not sure what time it is when he finally falls asleep, but he wakes to the shrill ring of the phone, and on the other end, Dad's voice weary and excited at the same time, barking directions to Bayou La Batre and lists of supplies for them to bring him when they come.

Sam comes out of the bathroom, hair wrapped in a towel and her old pink bathrobe pulled tight around her waist. She presses a kiss to his forehead while Dad's still talking in his ear.

When he hangs up, she says, "I made coffee," and then, "I have a trig test on Monday, so this better not take too long." Everything is the way it should be, and Dean breathes out in relief, feeling like he's dodged one more bullet.

*

After the haunted shrimp boat--and Dean doesn't think he'll be able to face a plate of scampi for months--Dad's restless, eager to move on, find something else to hunt. He pulls Sam out of school at the holidays; they pack up and are on the road in less than a day, leaving the warmth of the Gulf Coast behind as they head north and west, chasing rumors of ghosts and danger.

Dad still makes them share a room when they stay at motels, and Dean doesn't complain again, lets himself be surrounded by Sam and what she's giving him, trying not to think about it as what he's taking from her.

It should be weird, and in some ways it is, because she's Sammy, and he remembers holding her the day she was born, remembers carrying her out of the house the night of the fire, remembers singing her to sleep, kissing her scraped knees, and now he knows what she looks and sounds like when she comes, what she _tastes_ like. He's never stuck around long enough to know anyone the way he knows her, to let anyone know _him_ the way she does, and he knows there's no easy out for either of them when this ends--and it will end, because she wants so much more from life than hunting and fucking her brother, and the thing is, she _deserves_ it, and he's afraid that when she gets it, she'll leave him behind altogether, one more relic of a life she doesn't want. And he's afraid that if she doesn't get it, she'll end up hating him for keeping her with him, for betraying her trust and using sex to hold her close.

He's not sure which he's more afraid of, so he pushes it away, loses himself in the smooth skin of her belly and the silky weight of her breasts in his hands, under his tongue.

In some ways, though, it's as normal as anything else in their lives, because it's Sam and Dean, curled up under the ugly polyester covers, bad eighties cop shows on television, warm and safe from the world outside, better protection than any salt lines or chalk symbols could ever be.

*

They spend Christmas with Pastor Jim, New Year's with Bobby, and land in Ames, Iowa when Sam reminds them that she's still got school to finish and could they please settle until June this time?

They rent a small house not too far from the university, and Sam trades in her flip-flops and jean jacket for snow boots and a parka, complaining the whole time about the cold and how showing up in January makes it hard to get on the track team, even with a glowing reference from her old coach in Mobile.

Dean's twenty-first birthday sneaks up on them--Dad's picking up shifts as a security guard at the hospital, and Dean's pumping gas during the day and hustling pool at night, trying to make the rent and keep them in food and clothes and ammo. He comes home that night to Sam beaming at him over a heavily decorated cake (she's more enthusiastic in the kitchen than capable, because she tends to get absorbed in her reading and forget she's cooking) and Dad pulling him into a one-armed hug and inviting him out for a drink, since he's legal now.

After dinner and cake, Dad gives him a new shotgun, which is more than he expected--when he turned eighteen, Dad gave him the Impala, and he's only gotten small gifts since then, doesn't really need anything else.

Sam hands him a small box wrapped in bright paper. "It's not much," she says, looking anxious.

"I'm sure it's great." She's taped it up so tightly he has to pull out his pocketknife to get it open. When he finally manages it, he sees three leather bracelets resting on that white cottony stuff they put in jewelry boxes.

"They're elephant hair bracelets," she says, leaning forward and sliding them onto his right wrist, fingers warm as a kiss against his skin. "The knots represent earth and nature, and the strands represent the seasons. They're supposed to provide protection from illness and accidents."

"Thanks, Sammy." He smiles, honestly touched at the thought she put into the gift.

She's still holding his hand in hers when Dad pulls on his jacket and says, "Come on, Dean." Sam pouts, and he almost gives in to her when she asks to come along--it'd be the least of the things he's given in on--but Dad laughs and ruffles her hair, easy with her in a way he rarely is lately, and says, "You'll have your turn, Sammy. Your brother will be so busy warning away your potential boyfriends that he won't have time to enjoy himself."

The idea of some asshole picking Sam up in a bar makes Dean feel a little sick, but he pushes it away, brushes a hand down her back and drops a kiss on the top of her head to say thank you.

"Dad, please?" she says. "My homework's all done, and I promise I won't complain when you're ready to leave."

Dad looks at Dean, and Dean shrugs. "It's fine by me."

Dad rubs a hand over his jaw and says, "Okay, but we're not staying long. And don't even try to order anything but Coke, Sammy."

"Diet Coke."

Dad smiles. "That, too."

She throws her arms around him, gives him a quick squeeze, and he rests a hand on the top of her head for a second, as always looking as startled by her spontaneous shows of affection as he is by her constant questioning of his authority.

She grabs her coat and bumps her hip against Dean's as they walk out, her hand skimming under his shirts and over his belly like a promise, making him stumble. She spins away from him, laughter ringing through the cold night air like a bell.

The bar is like a hundred other bars he's been in since he was sixteen and old enough to stare down bouncers with his fake ID--hard wood floors and scarred wood tables, darts and pool in the backroom, a jukebox heavy on Skynyrd and Zeppelin, and a cute blonde waitress dressed in a short skirt and belly shirt despite the cold.

"Midnight Rider" is playing when they slide into a booth, and the waitress saunters over, eyes and smile bright.

"I'm Annette, and I'll be your waitress tonight. What can I get you folks?" she says, never looking away from Dean.

"It's my boy's birthday," Dad says, "so we're doing a little celebrating."

It doesn't seem possible, but Annette's smile gets wider and she leans in, giving him a whiff of her flowery perfume. "Happy birthday."

He can feel Sam tense next to him, so he puts a hand on her knee and squeezes. "I'll have a bottle of Bud and a shot of Jack."

"Make that two," Dad says. "And a Coke for the young lady."

"Diet Coke." Sam's smile is tight and false, and he wonders if she regrets coming.

"Happy birthday, son," Dad toasts him, and they knock back the shot, warmth of it in his chest welcome after the cold outside. Sam sips her diet Coke and fidgets until Dad hands her a bunch of singles and sends her off to commandeer the jukebox. "Don't forget to play some Johnny Cash," he says, and she waves her hand, promising nothing.

The liquor doesn't taste any different now that Dean's legal, but he likes not having to worry about getting tossed out, about having his ID confiscated (there was this town down the Jersey shore where the bouncers got fifty bucks for every fake they found, and Dean tried three different clubs before he gave up; he's looking forward to going back to Jersey someday and walking in like he owns those places), because those things can be a bitch to replace, and even though he's gotten good at it over the years, it's still time and effort he could be spending on something else.

"Thanks, Dad."

They drink in silence for a couple minutes, and Dean hums along with the jukebox, which has switched to "Baba O'Riley," and grins at the waitress when she goes past, a little extra swing in her hips, just for him.

Another beer, another shot, and Dad's slouching against the back of the booth a little, small smile on his face. "Sammy's settling in pretty well, don't you think? She seems happier lately."

He looks over to see her bent over the jukebox, face scrunched up in concentration. "Yeah." He takes a sip of beer, forces himself to stay calm, because Dad doesn't know, can't _ever_ know, what's putting a smile on Sam's face these days. "I think the track thing--I think it's good for her. Girls who play sports--" He has some vague recollection of a Nike commercial about it that used to enthrall her. He fumbles for words, can't find any that won't lead to trouble, so he settles for repeating himself as if he's said something profound. Dad'll blame the Jack if he even notices how lame Dean sounds. "It's good for them. Keeps her out of trouble." He takes another sip of beer. "Looks good on her college applications, too." Not that he wants her to go, or to go away, anyway. Which is what it means--it's not like they're going to stay in one place, so no matter where she goes, it will be away.

Dad nods. "I wish we could let her go. I wish it was safe. But it's not, Dean. You understand that, right?"

"I--Yeah, of course." He hates that it's not safe, hates that he's grateful that keeps her with him, but he's not sure, in the end, that she's going to stay.

"Don't encourage her. It'll only break her heart when she can't go."

"Dad, I'm not--"

Dad gives him a look, because he knows how Dean crumbles like a Ritz cracker when Sam pushes him.

"Any boys I should know about?" Dean chokes on his beer, and Dad laughs. "I know, it's...difficult to think about. But she's a beautiful girl, and they're bound to come sniffing around, probably sooner rather than later."

Dean clears his throat, manages to find his voice. "I know. I'm on it." It's not technically a lie.

"Don't be afraid to show 'em your new shotgun." Dad clinks his bottle against Dean's, and this time, they both laugh, though Dean's is edged with nervousness he hopes his father can't hear. "Your sister is a special girl. I'm sure every father thinks that about his daughter, but Sammy...Sammy is..."

"Yeah, Dad. I know." He takes another swallow of beer, signals the waitress for another round. "I'm sure she'd like to hear that, too." It's as close as he's come to criticizing his father in a long time. Possibly ever.

Dad looks away for a second, shakes his head. "She'd probably turn it into some kind of argument. Never saw a kid who liked to argue so much. Stubborn as hell, too."

"Gee, I wonder where she gets that from."

Dad points a finger at him in warning. "Watch yourself, buddy." But there's no heat in it.

Alanis Morrisette's sharp, angry voice blares out of the speakers, and they both wince.

"That and her god-awful taste in music."

"That I can't take any credit for." He shakes his head. "At least she's grown out of that boy band shit."

"Yeah, even this angry chick rock is a step up from that." Dean shudders, remembering the Backstreet Boys poster she'd carried from crappy apartment to cheap motel to crappy apartment, fished it out of the garbage every time he'd tried to get rid of it. And then one day, it'd disappeared as if it'd never been there at all, and she curled her lip disdainfully at her old tapes, left them behind somewhere between Tallahassee and Atlanta. "If she'd kept it up, I was gonna suggest disowning her."

Dad laughs again. "So you let her play the angry chick rock in the car?"

"God, no! Same rules as always. Driver picks the music." Though Dad had bent that sometimes for them, let him listen to Metallica's new albums the day they came out, let Sam play _Nevermind_ until the tape damn near snapped once she'd discovered Nirvana.

"She's gonna be taking Driver's Ed this semester." Dad takes the new bottle of beer from the waitress, who leans in to clear the empty shot glasses off the table and gives Dean a look down her shirt. Dean grins appreciatively, lets his gaze slide down her body like he's already got her undressed and on her knees. She walks away with a smile, and he thinks they're going to have to leave her a nice tip, either way. "Been thinking you should take her out driving."

"Wait, what?" Dean snaps out of his daze, sits up straight. "You want me to let Sammy drive the Impala?"

Sam slides back into the booth next to him, sullen glare at the waitress replaced with an eager look. "You learned to drive in the Impala."

"Yeah, but that was me. Dad taught me to drive when I was tall enough to reach the pedals." He hadn't done it but once or twice then, in emergencies, but knowing how to drive when other kids his age were still riding around on bicycles, had been the coolest thing--cooler than the first time Dad had handed him a beer after a hunt (at fifteen) or the first time Dad let him drop a book of lit matches into a grave (at thirteen, and that's still pretty fucking cool at twenty-one)--because even as a kid he'd known the Impala was pretty much as cool as things ever got, and he'd hit that peak at twelve and never come down.

Dad reaches out and squeezes Sam's hand. "Well, Sammy's certainly tall enough for that."

"Dad--"

"Dean."

There's no arguing with that tone of voice, and Dean knows it. "Yes, sir."

"It's not like I haven't taught her the basics."

"And I'll be taking Driver's Ed," she adds.

Dad nods. "You'll just be helping her practice." He must still look skeptical, because Dad says, "I'm counting on you, Dean."

"Yes, sir."

"I mean it." He leans forward, gets that focused look only hunting puts on his face. "I heard from Caleb this afternoon. He's tracking a pack of werewolves. Next full moon, we're going after 'em. We're gonna need every gun we've got on this one, and I need to know I can count on you and Sammy both to be prepared for anything."

Dean nods, head spinning. They've taken down lone werewolves on occasion, and there was that time with what turned out to be a married couple outside Three Forks, but a whole pack is something else, something big. The thought of depending on Sam to drive in an emergency is kind of scary, but she'll be safer waiting in the car than tramping through the woods with him and Dad and Caleb, and Dad knows what he's doing--he's kept them all alive so far.

"We will be, Dad. Don't worry about it."

"Good man." Dad claps him on the shoulder, smiling, and that's all Dean's ever asked from him, best present he could have gotten. The only dark spot is the way Sam tenses next to him, but he kicks her before she can complain about hunting again, and she bites her lip and looks away.

One more round, and Dean's just getting into the swing of the night, eyeing the pool table with interest, but Dad's ready to pack it in. He glances at the waitress and gives Dean a knowing grin. "You can stay if you want--it's your birthday party. I'll leave the chain off, but try not to stay out too late."

Dean nods. "I won't."

Dad tosses a couple of twenties onto the table and stands, pulling his jacket on. "Come on, Sammy, let's motor. You've got school in the morning."

She slides out of the booth and gives him a look that's hurt and angry all at once. He grabs her hand, squeezes it--to reassure her? To apologize for something he hasn't done yet, but they both know he's thinking of doing? He's not sure, and she obviously doesn't get it, or, more likely, she doesn't want it, because she jerks away, lips quirking in a frown. She's generally got a good poker face, and it's getting better as she gets older, but her mouth always gives her away--he's been reading it for years, like a second language she doesn't even know she's speaking.

"I didn't even get to hear all my songs," she starts, but one look from Dad stops her. She promised, and even in something as small as this, they all take that seriously. "Happy birthday," she says instead, and lets Dad lead her away.

Dean gets up, goes to the pool table, and puts his money down for next, offering to play the winner. Turns out the guy owns a red sixty-nine GTO, and they get to talking about cars and engines, the possibility of some part-time work in a garage. Dean grins wide, surprisingly warmed at the oddness of maybe making a friend. Annette keeps the drinks coming, and now that he's alone, she's even more flirtatious, and he shows his appreciation.

He thinks about it as he plays, not even trying to hustle tonight and still winning enough to at least cover his tab and still have cash left over, thinks about dyed blonde hair ghosting over his skin, the weight and feel of her tits in his hands--she's at least a C-cup, if not a D--and lips painted bright pink wrapped around his dick. He wonders if she'd let him fuck her in that tight little ass, if she'd giggle and pretend she'd never done it before, or if she'd be proud of her ability to give him whatever he wanted.

Nirvana segues into Johnny Cash as he sinks the eight ball again, pockets his winnings, and leans a hip against the table to watch her as she takes off her apron and drops it on the bar.

"Going on my break," she says when she walks past, hips swaying like an invitation.

Dean thinks of Sam, all the promises he's made her, and all the ones he hasn't, the things he shouldn't give her, and the things he always will.

"Have a good night," he says. When she pouts, he says, "I've got to be at work early in the morning," and she walks away, knowing rejection when she hears it.

And the really fucked up part is, he doesn't regret it nearly as much as he thought he would, as he probably should. He drains the rest of his beer and heads home, Annette the waitress already forgotten.

*

Dad and Sam are already up and having breakfast when Dean gets to the kitchen in the morning. Sam's got her nose in a book, bowl of cereal in front of her forgotten, and Dad's got his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee.

Coffee. Coffee would be good, he thinks, taking his mug off the drain board and reaching for the coffee pot.

"Have a good time last night?" Dad asks.

"Yeah." Dean leans against the counter, drinks half his coffee in one long sip, brain still fuzzy from lack of sleep and the early hour. Christ, he fucking hates mornings.

"Made a new friend?" Dad usually doesn't tease him about that shit, especially not in front of Sammy, so he must be in a good mood.

"Yeah," he says again, and he hopes he didn't toss that guy's name and number out. He's sick of pumping gas, would love to get back to actually doing real engine work, if he has to work at all.

Sam shoves her chair back with a squeak and dumps her half-eaten bowl of cereal into the sink.

"I'm going to be late this afternoon," she says. "Coach Marley is letting me try out for the team, says maybe I could be an alternate or something." She pulls on her coat, shrugs her backpack on over it. "I'll get a ride home with Claudia." She presses a kiss to Dad's cheek and rushes out to catch her bus like Dean's not even in the room.

He looks at Dad, who shrugs and shakes his head in the way Dean has come to recognize means it's some mysterious girl thing, or maybe just a mysterious Sam thing, and neither of them will ever quite understand it.

It's not until after his third cup of coffee, when the combination of caffeine and gasoline fumes has cleared his head, that he thinks he gets it.

When she comes home that night, he's waiting with a copy of _The Princess Bride_ and the promise of microwave popcorn. She rolls her eyes and sucks her teeth at him, and holes up in her room with her homework until Dad tells her to come out and eat.

She's heading right back to her room when Dad says, "Hey, now, Sammy, your turn to wash the dishes."

She turns back, annoyed look on her face, and says, "Fine."

Dean grabs a dishtowel and leans against the sink, waiting. Dad's sitting at the cleared off table, doing some research and writing in his journal.

Sam doesn't even hand him the dish, just puts it on the drain board and sticks her hands back under the water, splashing herself and nearly nailing him, as well.

"So, the guy I was shooting pool with last night, his friend owns a garage. Might have some work for me."

"That's good," Dad says absently.

Sam huffs, like she doesn't believe a word he's saying. "Whatever."

"Sam, I don't like that tone of voice."

She rolls her eyes again, and Dean remembers sixteen, remembers feeling like that constantly when talking to adults, so he can't really blame her, but she says, "Yes, sir," in a subdued tone, which isn't like her at all.

"If you're done with your homework, we can watch the movie," he says. "Got popcorn and everything."

"I'm not five, Dean. Jesus. I have a chem test to study for and a few chapters to read for English. Why don't you go have a night out with your new _friend_?"

It's his turn to say, "Whatever," and under his breath, "brat."

She keeps it up for another two days, and it's like living in a minefield, because he knows eventually something's going to set her off, but he's not exactly sure what it's going to be, and he's never been the most careful guy in the world, so watching every word he says is giving him a headache.

He thinks about apologizing, but he's got nothing to apologize for; he wishes she would give him a little credit, a little trust. Because he's not going to stop going out, and he doesn't want to go through this with her every time he does. He thinks about saying that, but in the end, he doesn't say anything at all.

He takes her driving, but even that doesn't crack the ice. She's nervous at first, and trying to hide it, which makes him nervous, and he wonders if he can talk Dad into letting them do this in the truck, because he can't afford to do any kind of serious bodywork on the Impala these days. She rebuffs his efforts to discuss hockey--a sport neither of them follows, but he's watched enough of it on ESPN on long, restless nights in motels to understand it--and they have a snippy argument over the possibility of Bush as a musical choice in his car.

It's not like Dean has anything against derivative bands, because there are only so many geniuses out there, and everybody can't be Jimmy Page, but Bush is like a photocopy of a photocopy of Nirvana, who cribbed their signature sound from the Pixies anyway. At least they copped to it. And Dean, who's not a huge fan of the Pixies--though he'd totally bang Kim and Kelly Deal both if he had the chance--recognizes the sheer awesomeness of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," even if he mostly wishes he never has to hear it again after a steady diet of it, first on the radio when it came out, and then again when Sam finally developed some musical taste and latched onto Nirvana as the band of her heart, but he can't admit that when arguing with her, so he shuts up except to give her directions and to mutter snarky comments about other drivers.

The steady knot of tension in his shoulder expands into a throb behind his left eye by the time they're done, and he heads out to the bar after dinner, desperate for some peace.

He goes out the next night, too, but makes sure he's home relatively early and smells of nothing worse than beer and stale cigarettes. On the third night, she thaws a little, sits at the kitchen table to do her homework instead of disappearing into her room.

He hangs around, offers to play Nintendo with her, but she shakes him off. She's not bitchy about it, though, which is a nice change.

Around eleven, Dad says, "Why don't you pack it in, Sammy? It's a school night."

She kisses them both good night and heads into her room without arguing, which, along with the glances she's been throwing his way, is enough to make Dean wary.

A couple hours later, he's nearly asleep when she pushes the door to his room open and closes it behind her with a quiet click. She's got the old pink bathrobe on, but when he sits up, she shrugs it off her shoulders and drops it to the floor. He doesn't even want to know where she picked that up from. Too much goddamn television, no doubt.

She's wearing a lacy red baby doll nightie that's exactly what he finds sexy--it should probably disturb him, how well she knows him--and it looks both hot and wrong on her. She climbs into his lap, smiling like it's Christmas morning and all the presents have her name on them.

She kisses him, tongue slick and sweet in his mouth, tasting of toothpaste and secrets, and the lace of her outfit is rough under his hands.

He pulls back, rubs the hem of her top between his fingers. "This isn't you, Sammy."

"It could be. If you wanted it to be," she whispers, teeth closing gently on his earlobe, and then again on the skin beneath, and _shit_, she does know him too well, in ways she shouldn't. He gasps, the lingering vestiges of sleep and the hot rush of need making it hard for him to think clearly.

"That's not what I want," he manages.

She grinds down against him, and the flimsy lace of her panties and the thin material of his boxers do nothing to disguise the wet heat of her cunt. "You sure? 'Cause that's not what it feels like to me." She nips at his lower lip, then slides her lips along his jaw, down his neck, her thumbs tracing circles over his collarbones.

"I don't--I mean, I do, I mean--" She reaches into the opening of his boxers and wraps her hand around him, stroking firm and sure--"_God_." It's an honest-to-God prayer, which doesn't happen very often, mostly because he doesn't really believe in capital-G God like Pastor Jim does, but Sam makes him want to believe sometimes, if only because then he could maybe believe someone besides him and Dad is looking out for her. He grabs her shoulders, shakes lightly. "Sam, Sam, Sammy." She looks at him, curious, a little wary now, like she does when she knows she's going to get busted for doing something she knows she shouldn't have, and she's planning to use the puppy-dog eyes to get out of it. "Don't make me go all Afterschool Special on your ass," he says.

She brushes her thumb across the head of his cock and he sucks in another desperate breath. "Is that really what you want to do with my ass?" When he doesn't answer right away, still trying to figure out what it is he wants to say, because he knows he can't fuck this up (not that it isn't totally fucked up already, but since their situation normal has never been other people's, maybe other people's fucked up doesn't have to be theirs), she leans back, sits on his knees, expression changing from curious to hurt. "Or do you not want me at all? Is that it?"

This is why he stopped fucking high school girls the day he left high school. "_God_." He doesn't know how she does it, opening herself up like that, and he doesn't want her to ever stop, not with him, even though he knows that sooner or later, he's going to hurt her. "It's not that. It's that I want _you_, not--" he tugs at the camisole again "--this."

"Does it not look good?" She looks down at herself, touches her breasts, barely covered by the wispy material. "I know I don't look like that--like the girls you like. I'm kind of skinny and not very--"

He grunts in frustration. She should know there's no competition, that he'll always choose her over anyone and everyone else. "You're perfect. You're _Sam_." He slides his hands up her arms, over her shoulders, pushes the straps of her top down so he can cup her breasts, run his thumbs over her tight, pink nipples. Her breath hitches and she arches into his touch. He slides his hands around her back, the bones both strong and delicate beneath his fingers, hauls her in for a kiss, and she sighs into his mouth. He can feel her trembling, and hates himself for making her doubt for even a second that he does want her, would want her any way she wants to be, any way she's willing to let him have her. Wants her more than any truck stop waitress or random hook-up. Wants her to know she means more than that, and always will. He wouldn't take the risks he has with her if she didn't. "I didn't--I haven't--" he murmurs, but the words get lost in the glide of skin against skin, and he thinks maybe she knows what he means. He hopes she does.

She's frantic, a little wild, hands moving too fast, clutching too tight as she touches him, and he soothes her with kisses and soft nonsense words.

She's got a condom tucked in the elastic of her waistband and she hands it to him before she slides the lacy panties off. He's barely ready for the tight, wet heat of her as she sinks down onto him, eyes closed and head tipped back, hands on his shoulders and knees cradling his hips. She moves up and down slowly at first, and then harder and faster as he fingers her clit, mouths her breasts, tells her with his hands and lips and cock what he can't say with words.

She clenches around him like a fist when she comes, holding him deep inside her body, and pulling him along with her into the bright, hot pulse of orgasm. He has enough presence of mind to yank her close and cover her mouth in a hard kiss to muffle the noise so they don't wake Dad and get themselves killed, or worse.

When she's done, she curls up against him, blissed-out smile on her face, already three-quarters of the way to sleep. He loves that he can do this to her--_for_ her--and he wishes she could stay cradled in his arms all night, but she has school in the morning, and they can't take the chance of not waking up before Dad, so he chivvies her into her bathrobe and back to her room.

He falls asleep with the scent of her on his skin and his sheets.

*

It's too freaking cold, Dean thinks, trying to think of warm things--coffee, fire, being wrapped up in bed with a hot chick--as they wait for the werewolves to show up. Dad and Caleb are trying to drive them into the clearing, and they've been waiting on the outskirts, ready to take their shots, for what feels like hours. Instead of waiting in the car like Dean had expected, Sam is about fifteen feet away to his left, using a tree for cover, the muzzle of her rifle like a low-hanging branch in the darkness, the red bandana in her hair the only spot of color he can see. The moon is full overhead, and the ground is covered in snow, and it'd be beautiful in a freakish Hallmark sort of way if it wasn't so freaking cold, and Sammy didn't look like she was going to puke or pass out any second.

The sound of gunfire startles him to attention, and then the chase is on, werewolf black against the white snow, darker and faster than the night behind it, but it doesn't keep going straight; instead it angles right, heavy muscular body eating up the ground between them fast, too fast, heading right towards them, like a guided missile that's found its target.

Dean swings around, raises his rifle and shoots as the thing leaps, messing up his shot; he gets it in the belly, not the heart, and it howls in pain, jaws snapping as it lands on Sam, takes her down with raking claws. Dean's heart stops but everything else keeps moving, faster than he can see. Sam's dodging sharp, yellow teeth, her face pale as the snow now staining red with blood--hers, the wolf's--and there's another shot, muffled by the wolf's body, and a third, up through its elongated snout, taking the top of its head off. She shoves at the carcass ineffectually, and he can hear her ragged breathing, see it misting in the darkness.

The paralysis of fear dissipates, leaving him weak and hoarse. "Sam! Sammy!"

"Get it off me, Dean, please!"

He grabs at the thing, fur bristly and slick with blood, and hauls it off her. Her left shoulder is slashed, four claw marks cutting through numerous layers of clothing and fairly deep into her skin, blood staining everything, but she hasn't been bitten.

"You okay?"

She swallows hard, and he can see tears oozing from the corners of her eyes, but she nods. He reaches down, grabs her right hand, pulls her up, as Dad and Caleb finally arrive.

"Sammy, you all right?" Dad grabs her good shoulder, brushes his thumb across her cheek.

She nods again, though her hand tightens on Dean's. With her left hand she scrubs at her face, sniffing and swallowing to stop herself from crying.

Dad turns to him, worry and fear combining into anger. "What the hell happened, Dean?"

He's trying to concentrate on making a temporary bandage out of her bandana, forcing his hands not to shake. He grabs her hand, pressing it against the wound to stop the bleeding while he ties it in place with her still-whole scarf. "I--It happened so fast--" A ferocious howl coming from somewhere to the west of them interrupts him.

"There are still three more out there," Caleb says. "They separated when they saw us--they're smarter than regular wolves, and regular wolves are pretty damn smart. They must have sensed you somehow."

Dean is still taking inventory of Sam, running his flashlight over her, brushing the snow off her legs and back, when he notices the stain on her ass. "Fuck, Sam, what--Oh, fuck. You gotta be kidding me."

Dad looks at him, then at Sam. "What?"

She hunches her shoulders in misery. "I didn't expect--" Her voice is barely a whisper, and Dean has to strain to hear it. She glances at Caleb, embarrassed, and then back at Dean. "I'm usually thirty days like clockwork, but it's, like, four days early, and--"

He can see realization dawn in Dad's eyes. "You couldn't have said something?" Dad yells, and she drops her gaze, misery plain on her face. Then he looks at Dean. "And you, you didn't know?"

Which is totally unfair. "No, sir. I didn't know I was supposed to be keeping track of my sister's period."

"It's not his fault," Sam says before Dad can yell at him for being insubordinate, and they both glare at her. "I didn't even know for sure until we'd been here for a while."

The wolf howls again, and another answers it from what sounds like north of them.

Dad runs a hand through his hair. "We'll be discussing this later," he says, "but right now, we've got a blood trail that's drawing them in, and we can take all three of them out. Dean, take your sister back to the motel now. Caleb and I will finish this up."

"Dad--"

"Now, Dean. Go."

"Yes, sir."

He takes Sam's arm, and as they walk away, Dad cups her face again, gently, holds it in his hand until his fingers slide away when she moves.

"I'm sorry," she whispers when they get to the car.

"It's not your fault." Dean guns the engine, peels up the dirt road and out of the woods like the werewolves are after them. She shifts uncomfortably and he leans over, opens the glove compartment, rummaging around by feel until he finds the bottle of Advil. He tosses it into her lap. "Here."

She dry-swallows a couple of pills with a grimace.

It's not too far to the motel, and he doesn't blame her for sprinting to the bathroom, stripping her bloody coat and shirt off on the way.

He gathers the supplies--peroxide, butterfly bandages, gauze squares, and a roll of Kling--and sets them down on the toilet tank. Then he strips down, leaving his clothes on the floor next to hers.

Nobody should be familiar with the sight and scent of their kid sister's blood as it washes down the drain--he can see now that the gashes in her shoulder and upper arm are clean and not as deep as he'd first feared--but he's all too familiar with it, been seeing it her whole life, so it doesn't freak him out the way it probably should, when he pushes back the shower curtain to make sure she's all right, and sees the water is still tinged pink as it washes away. He's more surprised to find her touching herself, one foot resting on the edge of the tub, fingers sliding between her thighs.

"Oh," they both say, and he feels his face heat, can see the blush rising under her skin.

"Sorry," he says.

"No, please." She steps back against the tile, holds out her other hand to him.

He climbs into the tub, letting the curtain close behind him, and pulls her close, pressing his face to the top of her head, breathing her in, making sure she's solid, whole, alive under his fingers. He feels the pulse beating in her neck, splays a hand over her heart, examines the four cuts on her shoulder with a clinical eye.

"You'll probably get away without scars, if we do this right," he says, cheek pressed against her temple. She nods, and he can feel her breathing, the hitch and hiccup of it, the way her whole body trembles just a little, enough that he can feel it, but probably wouldn't be able to see it if he was just looking.

 

She raises her face, eyes wide and green in the sharp fluorescent lighting, and he kisses her softly, closed-mouthed, a gentle brush of lips, inhaling the air she exhales. Her breath hitches again, and he opens his mouth over hers, wet and hot and deep, tongue sliding over tongue, desperate to communicate fear and love and need in ways words never can. She wraps her arms around him, presses close, rubbing against him, warmer than the water cascading over them.

"Dean?" she asks, sliding a hand between them to curl around his hardening dick. "Please?"

He's never been involved with a woman long enough for this to have been an issue before, and he's not sure about it now. It's not like he'd ever turn down sex, but--

"You don't want to. It's okay."

"Of course, I want to, Sammy. I just--Are you sure? Can you?"

"I know it's kind of gross," she says, looking away, "but it's supposed to help with the cramps."

"Okay." He tips her face up, meets her gaze squarely. "Okay."

He moves away, goes to push the curtain open, and she says, "Where are you going?"

He pats himself down, laughs. "I don't exactly have a condom on me."

"Do we have to--Can't we just...not?" She leans in, licks at his lips and inside his mouth, hand curling around his dick again and stroking. "I want to feel you, skin on skin," she whispers. "I want to feel you come inside me."

"_Fuck._" He swallows hard, leans his forehead against hers, cock aching to do what she's suggested. "You really wanna take that chance?" He gives a small nervous laugh. "We can't--I can't. It's not safe." He doesn't say he's not safe--he tries to be, is as careful as he can be, but there's always a chance, and while he'll bear the risk himself if he has to, he's going to shield her from it as best he can. He pulls away, climbs out of the shower, and grabs his wallet out of his jeans, ignoring the way everything is getting wet. He finds what he's looking for, and hops back in. Tries not to think too much about what she's said, because maybe he can't protect her from werewolves, or from this fucked up thing they're doing, but he can do everything possible to minimize the consequences, to make sure she, at least, never has to pay for it.

When he's got it on, he holds her up against the wall, slides inside her, so tight and slick. She sighs, wraps her legs around his hips, and meets his thrusts with her own. He wants to pound into her, let his body work out all his fear and desperation, but he holds himself back, goes slow, making her gasp and moan and beg before he speeds up, hips flexing hard and fast while she touches herself. She clenches around him, comes with a low growling moan that sounds almost like the thing that attacked her tonight, rough and dangerous, and the only thing he can think as he breaks open, pleasure pulsing through him in waves, is that he has to keep her safe.

*

Sam's still asleep when Dean gets up in the morning. Dad and Caleb came back around four, successful but grim-faced, splashed with blood and smelling of fire, so he waits until ten before he knocks on Dad's door, coffee and Danish in hand.

Dad scrubs a hand over his face, three days of stubble making him look dangerous even half-asleep, and grunts, opening the door wide enough to let Dean in.

"How is she?"

"She's fine. Still sleeping. I bandaged her up, gave her some Advil, and put her to bed." He sips his coffee, picks at the icing on his cherry-cheese danish, and takes a deep breath before continuing. "There's a Planned Parenthood clinic not too far from the house." Dean tries to avoid those places as much as possible, but he always knows where they are, ever since a close call he'd had with this girl named Cindy, when he was seventeen and the condom broke. It was a false alarm; he's pretty sure there is no next generation of Winchesters running around.

Dad nods, and Dean remembers the first and only other time they ever discussed Sam's period, the day she first got it and freaked out, locked herself in the bathroom and shrieked about how she hated everyone and everything and why couldn't they be normal like other people? She'd been twelve, and Dean had felt Mom's absence like a sharp, sudden pain flaring up after years of a dull, steady ache. He feels it again now. If Mom was alive, they wouldn't _be_ this, wouldn't _do_ this. If Mom was alive...

It's a pointless thought, one he tries not to indulge. Wishes are for little kids and people who don't know better. He knows what's real, and that's what he deals with. Anything else is just a sucker bet, a sure ticket to heartbreak. He presses the heel of his hand to his forehead, trying to focus.

"Okay," Dad finally says, and Dean can tell he doesn't like it, either, but neither of them ever back away from the hard things. "You take her this afternoon, soon as we get back."

She shows up at the door then, hair in her eyes, moving stiffly. She smiles gratefully when he hands her a cup of coffee, and sits down on the bed with a sigh.

"Do you wanna tell me what happened out there last night?" Dad asks. "We've discussed this before, and, you know, you could have been seriously hurt, or worse."

"Do you think I don't know that?" She touches her injured shoulder.

"Don't take that tone with me, young lady. You're not too old for me to turn you over my knee and tan your hide."

They've been hearing that threat almost as long as Dean can remember, but he can count on one hand the times Dad's raised a hand to him in anger, and still have fingers left over. And Sammy's never gotten spanked at all. Could be why she's so mouthy.

Her mouth still has that stubborn set, but her voice is subdued when she says, "Yes, sir. What happened last night is that my period arrived unexpectedly, four days early. That whole part where it was unexpected and early is why I didn't warn you."

"_Sam_." Dad's voice is a warning and a command.

"You ever hear of menstrual synchrony?" She pushes a hand through her hair. "Girls who spend a lot of time together start to cycle together. And I just started spending time with a whole new bunch of girls. Maybe if we didn't move so much..."

Dad looks down at his cup of coffee, and Dean knows he's not imagining the regret on his face. "Well, we do. Speaking of which, I hope you're packed and ready to hit the road again. We're heading home as soon as you are."

Sam nods and sips her coffee, and for once doesn't say anything more.

In the car, Dean tells her where they're going, and she nods again. "I suppose Dad's on board with this? Anything to make hunting easier."

"Safer. He's trying to make it safer for you. For all of us."

"Whatever." She crosses her arms over her chest and shrinks down in the seat, mouth turned down in a frown.

"It'll make things easier for you, too," he says, trying to head off the inevitable bitch session she's working up to.

"Yeah, I'm sure that's his first priority."

"Sammy--"

"It's not that I don't think it's a good idea. I just--I don't know how you deal with him." She looks away, glares out the window at the snow-covered houses, snowmen starting to go grey and slushy in the front yards. Then she looks over at him, eyes bright and green, and he can see her brain working, knows she's come up with some angle he and Dad haven't thought of when she gives him the smile that never fails to make him worry, because it means she's got some crazy idea she's going to try to talk him into, and she'll probably succeed. Dammit.

"You know, every culture in the world has stories of sibling incest, and it's not always forbidden," she says. And there it is, that word he's spent months avoiding even _thinking_, lying between them like the body of that werewolf last night, vicious and bloody and raw. "In ancient Egypt--"

He pounds the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. "Does this look like ancient Egypt to you, Samantha? 'Cause I don't see any pyramids."

"No, but you're sure stuck in denial."

"That's not funny."

She gives him the puppy-dog eyes and the killer pout. "It's a little funny."

"It's really not." He grunts in frustration. "You're not the only one who can use the internet, you know, and that's all bullshit. The Egyptians didn't practice sibling marriage regularly. The Ptolemies did it sometimes, but they weren't even really Egyptian. They were, like, Greek, or something."

"Macedonian," she says, "but that's not the point. The point is, it's only a taboo because of genetics. And we're taking that out of the equation."

He doesn't answer--he doesn't _have_ an answer, at least not one he can put into words.

He puts a tape on, and they listen to Zeppelin for the rest of the drive.

*

They stay in Ames until Sam's done with junior year; she has a track meet on her birthday, and Dad actually takes an afternoon off to drive two towns over to watch her run. She wins, of course, her own races and then as the anchor on the four hundred meter relay, glows with it afterward, when she catches Dean's eye and smiles before rushing off with the team for pizza instead of celebrating with them.

He and Dad go to the bar, and after a few beers, Dad gets a little sentimental. "She's growing up," he says. "Sometimes, she reminds me so much of your mother." He looks down at the ring on his finger, twists it slowly, something he did a lot when he'd first started hunting, and Dean recognizes it as a way of clinging to reality, of grounding himself after accepting all the weird shit they see, handling the hard things, like how Sam's growing up, growing away from them, and there's nothing they can do to stop her, hold her, keep her safe, no matter how hard they try.

Dean gets involved in a game of pool, sticks around for a couple hours after Dad leaves, and it's late when he stumbles home, a little drunker than he'd anticipated.

Sam is waiting in his bed, half-asleep and still excited about her victories. They whisper in the dark about it for a bit, in between kissing and petting, and then he's inside her, letting himself drown in her, taste and feel and scent, the hot, sweet flex of her cunt around him as she comes making him breathless and desperate for his own orgasm, her voice strange and high and keening before he remembers they're not alone in the house, and quiets her with a kiss.

In the morning, Dad pulls him aside, says, "Look, I've mostly turned a blind eye to what you do, as long as you're safe, and you treat those girls with respect, but you can't bring anyone home, not while Sammy's in the house. You know that."

Dean feels his stomach drop and his throat close up. He chokes on the mouthful of coffee he's trying to swallow, and Dad pounds him on the back a couple times, until he can speak again.

"Sorry, sir," he croaks. "I was a little lit last night. It won't happen again."

"Good."

He offers to drive Sam to school, and Dad smiles, gives him a nod of approval, but the tightness in his gut doesn't disappear, and as soon as they're in the car he says, "We have to be more careful, Sammy. Dad heard us last night."

She pales, because for all her defiance, she's still Daddy's girl in the end, and she knows how badly this whole thing could end for all of them if he finds out.

Dean takes a deep breath, blurts, "Maybe we should just stop."

"No." Her answer is swift and absolute. "We'll just be more careful, like you said. We can just...do it in the car, or something. It's not like we don't go driving every afternoon, anyway."

It's exciting at first, adds another layer of hotness to the whole thing, sneaking around, finding hidden places to park and fuck in the backseat, but it's so much less than she deserves, and also freaking annoying and uncomfortable after a few weeks.

By then, school is over and they're packing up again, heading out on the road, despite Sam's bitching; Dad's denied her some SAT-prep course she swears will raise her score by a hundred points, and she doesn't let it go for nearly a thousand miles.

Dean doesn't mind the steady stream of complaints so much, though, because he loves being on the road, on the hunt, and when they get back to the motel, he and Sam are alone in their own room, just hanging out, watching Nick at Nite, or HBO when it's available, and it's as close to happy as he can remember being in a long time.

*

They spend weeks rooting out old ghosts on the east coast: a murdered pair of honeymooners at a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire, a suicidal school teacher in Maine, the vengeful spirit of an altar boy in Boston. Sam can't stop talking about Harvard and MIT, and how many fucking colleges are there in this city anyway, he thinks, but she takes to the whole college scene like a duck to water.

Sam is usually disdainful of their fraudulent activities and refuses to dirty her hands with them, but she's so eager to get into the libraries that she actually helps him make false student IDs for each school. She's supposed to do the majority of the research herself, while Dean and their father interview the families of the current victims, but when Dean picks her up after a day at the library, she's learned almost nothing about the altar boy, his family, or anything else that's actually relevant to the case, even though he can see she's filled pages in the spiral-bound notebook she's been using as a journal.

The next day, Dad goes to scope out the cathedral and sends Dean with Sam to make sure she stays on mission, instead of getting sidetracked. They all avoid talking about the open houses she's missed, the possibility that next year she could actually be a student at one of these schools--Dad still thinks she'll do what he says, and Dean keeps hoping she'll decide to stay.

Dean doesn't love research the way Sam does. It's another tool they use to hunt, and he's good at it when he has to be, but he'd rather be back at the motel with Dad's laptop, instead of in the library, where people give him nasty looks when he talks a little too loud, and the concentrated silence makes his skin itch. It's like church, in a way, and he's never been fond of that, either.

Sam, on the other hand, disappears into the stacks like she's come home for the first time in her life.

He gets tired of reading microfiche about the altar boy's suicide and the sick fuck of a priest who probably drove him to it, and goes looking for Sam. She's sitting at a table with a group of students, book open and pressed to her chest, the way she gets when she's excited about something she's reading, and they're all talking about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the hunt. She looks beautiful, happy, like she _belongs_, and fear, sharp and sour in the back of is throat, makes him queasy.

"Sam," he barks, low but meant to carry, and she jerks upright, face going immediately blank, and even he can't read her when she wears that look. "Let's go."

She smiles at the group of kids and says, "Sorry," as she gathers her stuff up and joins him. "What's up with you? You're all cranky all of a sudden."

"This place. And this hunt. The whole thing is fucking creepy."

She nods and hums in agreement, and he knows she's not paying attention. He slides an arm around her waist, whirls her into the stacks, her back against the shelves, and kisses her, slow and soft. He loves that they can do this in public here, where no one knows them, that they can pretend what they do is normal, that it's as good as it feels. She sighs into his mouth, lays her palm flat against his chest, over his heart, which is pounding, each beat the sound of her name in his ears. He slides his lips up her jaw, nips at her ear, and she curls her fingers in the thin cotton of his t-shirt to pull him as close as she can, with her books cradled between them. She tips her head back so he can kiss and lick her neck; he slides his thigh between hers and presses close, as close as they can get in public, and it seems right somehow to be kissing her surrounded by books with titles like Madness and Civilization and The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, while she clutches a history of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in her arms.

A cough from behind makes them separate, and Sam blushes and smiles, hand rising automatically to brush at her hair. Dean slaps her ass as they walk away--she squeaks, and he laughs, and it's enough to make the fear subside for the moment.

It flares up again in New York three weeks later. This time, she's twenty minutes late for their meet-up, and he's nearly ready to call the cops as he sits waiting in Washington Square Park.

He's left half a dozen angry messages in her voicemail ("I swear, I'm gonna LoJack your ass, Sammy."), trying hard to keep his voice from breaking and letting the fear ring through, and the feeling of helplessness is nearly overwhelming by the time she comes rushing up, eyes wide and excited, face flushed pink and damp in the summer heat. For no reason he can figure, she's dressed in a navy blue skirt and a white shirt (wilted now from the humidity, and unbuttoned far enough that he can see the tanned swell of her breasts), and he can't decide if he should shake her or kiss her, so he does a little bit of both, pulling her into a rough, one-armed hug and burying his face in her hair for a second, inhaling the scent of sweat and Flex shampoo.

He wonders if she's met a guy--wonders where she's found the time--but when she opens her bag to show him the folder full of photocopies and research on various ghosts that allegedly haunt Beth Israel Hospital, he catches a glimpse of the glossy brochures for NYU hiding amidst the paperbacks she carries everywhere, and a different kind of fear twists in his gut.

When he pulls out the guide to student life at New York University, she says, "Brittany Hall used to be a hotel, and there's rumors it's haunted."

"But it's not the job we're here for."

"No, but--" She bites her lip, gives him a pleading look. "My guidance counselor gave me the name of a friend of hers, who gave me a tour of the school, since Dad won't let me go to any open houses and--"

"Whatever," he says. He doesn't want to know, can't bear to think about it. He knows Dad'll never let her go--their fights on the subject have been epic--but he's not sure she won't just up and go anyway. "Don't be late again, or I'm gonna hunt your ass down and beat it, you hear me?"

"Is that supposed to scare me?" she says, laughing, and he wonders how she can be so blind.

"Yeah." He stands, wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. "Let's go." He leads her to the subway--they'd left the car and Dad's truck with a friend up in Ossining--and God, he hates this fucking city, with its heat and humidity and distinctive stench, and all these fucking people living on top of each other, with no escape from the crowd except to sink deep into their own heads, a place Dean's never liked to spend too much time in, himself.

The V train comes after eight or ten sticky minutes underground, and they get on, pressed tight by the rush hour commuters; he leans back against the closed door, slips an arm around her waist and pulls her tight against him. She wriggles back, teasing, and he swallows hard, presses his hand against her belly, fingers slipping between the buttons of her blouse to trace tiny circles on warm skin. He grins when he hears her breath catch.

"The things I'm gonna do to you when we get back to the hotel," he whispers in her ear. Her face, already flushed from the heat, goes a darker pink, and her ass presses back against him in invitation. He slides his lips down her neck, ignoring the disapproving stares from their fellow straphangers. He doesn't care what other people think, never has, and here it matters even less--he kind of likes how easy it is to be with her like this in a place where no one knows them. Almost like the normal she wants so badly.

"Oh, yeah?" she answers, looking up at him in challenge, smile playing at the corners of her mouth, which means he has to kiss her.

"Mmm...Gonna bend you over the desk and fuck you 'til you scream," he murmurs against her temple as the train screams into Thirty-Fourth Street, taking the hitch in her breathing as approval and anticipation. They tumble out of the train, carried along by the torrent of commuters rushing for the railroad downstairs.

They head up to the street, though, and she leads him by the hand, eager and laughing, over to the hotel. Dad is off buying hard-to-find supplies somewhere in Chinatown, and given past experiences, he's probably eating like a king at some hole-in-the-wall dive with the best dim sum in the city, and won't be back for hours. Which is good, because Dean can't keep his hands off Sam.

He doesn't know if it's fear or jealousy or some combination of the two, but as soon as the door is shut, he's pulling her shirt out of her skirt so he can slip his hands underneath to cup her breasts, feel her body respond to his touch beneath the silky, cool material of her bra. She drops her backpack and breaks the kiss only long enough to grab the hem of his t-shirt and yank it up, as eager and desperate as he is. Maybe she's afraid, too--of leaving, of not leaving, of things never again being as perfect as they are right now. He gets tangled in the shirt for a second; she giggles when he can't quite get free fast enough, but his grunt of frustration is changed into a moan by the feel of her lips skating over his chest and belly, trailing heat, igniting need.

Hands finally free, he grabs her by the hips and turns her around. "Lean on the desk," he says, voice low and rough, working his belt and zipper open.

She does what he says--God, he wishes she was that quick to take orders everywhere else--rests her weight on her elbows and turns to watch him over her shoulder, lips slightly parted and wet from his kisses, and he has to pause to breathe, almost choked by the need rising in him. He reaches up under her skirt to jerk her panties down, and she's wet, so wet for him.

He growls softly in approval, shoving his jeans down over his hips. He strokes his slightly trembling fingers over her slick cunt, nudging her thighs wide with his knee, his dick already in his other hand, aching to sink into her. She makes a soft, high-pitched choking sound, so he does it again. He squeezes his cock lightly, trying to keep control, and takes another deep breath; he licks her wetness from his fingers, then slides them over her lips, her tongue tickling his skin.

They don't usually fuck like this--he likes watching her face too much, likes seeing her open up and come undone under his touch--and even though she's been on the pill for months, and he hasn't been with anyone else since that night in the warehouse, he's used a condom every time (No sense in taking chances, Sammy), but right now, all he wants is to be inside her, to feel her and mark her and make sure she knows she's his, the way he's hers, has been hers forever.

He yanks her skirt up and pushes into her, hands on her hips holding her hard and steady, whispering, "So good, Sammy, God, so fucking good," the cotton of her shirt cool and dry against his skin in contrast to the wet heat of her cunt. She bucks back against him when he doesn't move fast enough.

"Dean, please," she begs, one of her hands coming off the desk to grab one of his and move it between her legs, rubbing frantically at her swollen clit. He tries to remember to breathe. She's as desperate as he is, urging him on, harder, Dean, please, her voice breaking on the words, the desk banging into the wall in time with his thrusts, echoing the staccato rhythm of his heart and her breath, the pulse of blood in their veins.

She clenches around him, shudders beneath him, gasping for air as she comes. Her low moan shatters him, and he loses himself inside her, hips pumping erratically and pleasure whiting out the world.

When he's done, he can barely stand, and she's trembling beneath him; he feels amazing, accomplished, like he could march into hell and take on the devil himself. He pulls back and she turns to face him, still shaky, blissful smile on her face.

He sinks to his knees in front of her, pushes her back against the desk, and leans in to lick at the sticky mess between her thighs, earning a gasp and the dull sting of her hands fisting in his hair and pulling tight, blunt nails scraping his scalp. He tastes himself and Sam and both of them mingled together, _SamandDean_, inseparable, bitter and secret, like the salt in the ocean, the salt in their blood, keeping out everything but themselves, binding them together against the world.

His fingers dig into the firm flesh of her thighs, and she thrusts against his mouth with a hoarse, wild cry that sends heat shivering through him, makes his dick ache for another round. He licks and sucks until she comes a second time, slower and deeper, his name a prayer on her lips.

She slides down into his lap gracelessly, loose-limbed and well fucked, and he lays her down on the tacky hotel carpeting and covers her body with his body, her mouth with his mouth in a soft, sloppy kiss. She holds him close, cradles him between her thighs, one warm, long-fingered hand coming down between them to curl around his cock and stroke until he falls apart again.

She keeps her arms wrapped around him, hides her face against his neck, and he can tell she's half-asleep already. He wants to stay this way forever, but he knows they can't, have to clean up, change, do laundry. Air the room out and hope Dad doesn't come back for a good long while.

He knows they can't stay like this, they _won't_ stay like this, but for a few minutes, while she's clinging close instead of pushing away, he holds her, and wishes they could.

*

By the end of summer, they're settled again, in a cute little bungalow painted pink and orange, just outside of Tampa, where a series of mysterious deaths at MacDill Air Force Base have pinged Dad's radar.

The unspoken truce between Sam and Dad deteriorates when school starts, and it's not helped by the fact that she and Dean no longer have the safety of their own room, or a lot of time alone together. Neither of them deals well with frustration, and Sam is bitchier than usual when she doesn't fit in right away at her new school, and has to fight to be put into AP Physics.

Dean finds work as a barback--they're pretty flexible when he needs nights off to hunt, and it leaves his afternoons free to do research or whatever else Dad needs from him, which is mostly run interference with Sammy.

It seems like Dad and Sam have the same argument every day; the only thing that changes is when it happens. Today, it impinges on a very pleasant dream of Jessica Alba, and he's pissed he didn't get to the part where she was naked before Sam's voice wakes him up.

"It's my senior year. Can we please stay the whole time? I'd like to be able to make friends and graduate with them."

"You know I can't promise you anything, Sammy. We go where the hunt takes us."

"That is such bullshit, Dad!"

"Don't take that tone with me, young lady."

"That's bullshit, too. You shift the argument to my _tone_ because you know I'm right and you just can't admit it."

Dean stumbles out of bed and into the kitchen, but he's not in time to defuse things.

"Samantha Winchester, I am still your father and you will speak to me with respect, do you hear me? No television and no telephone for a week, and you'll do extra PT in the morning with me before school."

"Fine! Do you think I care about any of that when you won't give me the money to send in my college applications?"

"For once in your life, Sam, think of other people," Dean says, and the words leave the sour taste of fear, of betrayal, in his mouth. "Think of all the people we help."

"I don't think it's selfish to want a safe, normal life," she snaps at him, then turns back to Dad. "And I don't see why helping other people is more important than helping your own kids. Don't you want us to have any kind of future?"

"It's because I want to keep you safe that we live like this," Dad yells. "You know what's out there as well as I do, missy. The safety 'normal' people have is an illusion, and you know that, too. I don't see how a smart girl like you can be so blind, so stupid. That's not how I raised you."

"No, you raised me to lie and steal and hunt werewolves. Sorry if I don't think it's a fair trade. The only thing I have--"

Dean interrupts before she can say something they'll all regret. "How can you sleep at night knowing someone else's family could end up like ours, and that we could have stopped it but didn't? None of us asked for this, Sammy, but someone's sure as hell got to step up and take it on."

She folds her arms across her chest, hurt flashing across her face at his treachery. "Maybe someone does," she says. "But it's not going to be me."

"As long as you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules, Samantha. And that includes hunting." Which is the worst thing Dad can say, and he knows it as well as Dean does, but he can't ever seem to stop himself, even though it backs Sam into a corner.

And she comes out swinging, claws unsheathed, knowing exactly how to draw blood in the way that hurts the most.

"Well, I won't be for much longer," she says. "I won't be here, and I won't need to follow your rules, ever again."

She grabs her backpack and stomps out of the house before either he or Dad can say anything else.

Dad sits down with a defeated sigh, and cradles his head in his hands.

"I don't know what we're gonna do with her," Dean says after a long silence.

"Keep her safe," Dad answers. "And worry about the rest later."

And they exchange sad, tense smiles that make Dean feel like he's putting a band-aid over a sucking chest wound.

*

When he gets home from work that night, he slips into her room.

"Sam, Sam, Sammy," he whispers, tapping the bottoms of her feet (he has a vague memory of Mom teaching him to wake her this way as a baby, small fingers tickling at even smaller toes, and getting a burbling laugh in response), and she rolls over, stretches lazily.

"Hey." She grins, reaches out to pull him down into bed with her, but he evades her hands.

"You gotta cut Dad a break, Sammy."

She sits up, mouth going hard and set. "Dean--"

"I'm serious, Sam." He rubs a hand over his eyes, tired from long nights of work and days of scanning newspapers and the internet for something to hunt while Dad concentrates on the Air Force thing. "We couldn't afford to send you to college, even if it was safe."

"There's such a thing as scholarships, Dean, and financial aid. Loans and--"

"And getting the government in our business? Is that what you want?"

"Maybe if you weren't goddamn criminals--"

He sucks in a breath, tries not to let the hurt show. "Sam--"

"I'm sorry, but it's true." She doesn't sound sorry at all.

He nods, has to unclench his fists and his jaw, but he manages to find an even tone when he speaks. "It is, but it's also what's kept a roof over your head and food in your stomach, and let me tell you something, sister, that shit don't come cheap. And I don't see you working an honest job to help out, either."

"That's not--"

"Don't say it's not fair, Sam. I swear to God, just do not say it."

She looks away, fingers picking at the blankets. "Dean--"

"Have a good night," he says, and walks away before either of them can say anything else.

*

He picks her up from school the next day, part of Dad's way of punishing her, and when she tries to cajole him into the backseat, sliding her hand up the inside of his thigh and sucking on his earlobe, he knows it's an apology of sorts, but he pulls away, tells her no.

She crosses her arms over her chest and sulks, but he doesn't give in. Not right away, anyway. They both know he can't hold a grudge to save his life, not against her, but he's got to make some small show of strength, or she'll just walk all over him, and he can't have that.

Again that night, he goes to her room when he gets home from work, his own version of an apology, slips into bed beside her and kisses her awake.

"Dean, what--"

"Shh," he whispers, putting a hand over his mouth. "We can't do this if Dad finds out. You have to be very quiet."

She mutters something that sounds like, "Hunting rabbits?" and he takes his hand away so he can laugh into her mouth.

"Think of it as a game," he whispers in her ear, hand back in place over her mouth, other hand lazily stroking over her skin, exposed by the tank top she's sleeping in. "I'm going to try to make you scream, but you win if you don't. And I know how much you like to win, Sammy." His hand dips beneath her top to brush the swell of her breasts, and then he slips down the bed to follow the same path with his lips.

Her breathing is harsh and ragged, and she makes some soft, choking sounds when he nips at the inside of her thigh, marking the smooth skin there, then soothing the sting away with his tongue. He brushes his fingers over the soaked cotton of her panties, enjoying the way she shivers at the touch, before he slips them down to her ankles and off. Her legs fall open and his fingers find the spot on the back of her knees where she's ticklish. She squirms and whimpers, but too soft for the sound to carry far.

He mouths her gently, taking his time, breathing in her scent, savoring the taste. She gives a low, impatient growl, and he laughs against her, soft puffs of his breath making her hips lift.

"Tease," she hisses at him, and he laughs again, hooking her legs over his shoulders, thumbs stroking the backs of her knees again briefly, then holding her open so he can suck her swollen clit into his mouth.

She arches up, letting loose a strangled moan, and all thought of Dad or getting caught is forgotten, because he wants to make her fall apart, wants to hear her call out his name when she comes. She's apparently forgotten, too, because she moans again, and it sounds terrifyingly loud in the silence.

They both freeze when they hear the creak of the bedroom door down the hall.

"Fuck." Dean jumps up off the bed, silently offers thanks to the universe that the house only has one floor and swings himself out the window, into the hydrangeas, just as Dad pushes into Sam's room without knocking, shotgun at the ready. Dean leans against the side of the house and peers in, holding his breath.

"Sammy? You okay?"

Sam's got the sheet pulled up to her neck and she's staring at Dad in horror. "I'm fine," she says breathlessly, covering her face with her hand as if she's embarrassed. "I was... I just... I had a nightmare." Her voice is a high squeak and the words tumble out too quickly, too obviously untrue, and Dean bites back a groan. She's usually a much better liar than this, even to Dad. Maybe especially to Dad. She sounds young and scared, and it's his fault, which is something he's always tried to avoid. He braces himself for whatever's coming next.

There's a long pause where it's obvious Dad is doing the math and coming up with an answer that is not something he needs a shotgun for, though now he probably wishes it were. Finally, he says, "Oh. Okay," gratefully grabbing onto the lie Sam's offering. Dean can't make out Dad's face in the darkness, but he sounds more freaked than Dean's ever heard him, except for the first time Sam got her period, and Dean has to bite back a bubble of hysterical laughter. Dad pats the dream-catcher hanging over her bed, avoids looking at her, and says, "Nothing's gonna getcha while I'm around, Sammy." He backs out of the room slowly, as if facing a dangerous, unknown creature instead of his seventeen-year-old daughter. "If you're all right, I'm just gonna go back to bed."

Sam nods and smiles tightly. "Okay. Sorry I woke you!"

Dean sags against the wall and breathes a sigh of relief. He crawls back into the room but shakes his head when Sam reaches out to him. This was too fucking close for him to feel anything but fear, sour as bile in the back of his throat. He presses a kiss to her forehead instead, and heads to his own bed. He can still taste her on his lips, salty and earthy and everything that's ever meant anything to him, and he knows it has to stop, because there's no way it can end well if they don't end it themselves, sooner rather than later.

Knowing doesn't make sleeping any easier, and he's still awake when the sky lightens with the gray of dawn.

He doesn't prepare any arguments, because he knows she can talk circles round him when she gets going, knows she doesn't even have to talk to get him to do what she wants in the end, and he knows she knows it, too. So, he makes the decision and swears he's going to stick to it, no matter what she says.

What she says is, "You can't break up with me, dumbass. I'm your sister." Her voice is low and furious, but he glances around anyway, hoping no one can hear her over the cheesy top forty crap blaring through the diner's speakers. She flings a French fry down into her plate in disgust.

"Yeah, and that's kinda the problem. Last night, if Dad had caught us--"

"So, you want to stop because you're afraid of Dad, or because you think it's wrong? Or is there some other reason you're not sharing?"

"Yes. All of that. It's wrong, and also, I would rather not have to face the business end of Dad's shotgun when he finds out, and if we keep going like this, he _will_ find out."

"Dean--" Her eyes are wide and hurt, but he forces himself not to give in.

"Look, it's not like you weren't planning on ditching me for college anyway, right?" She scowls at him, but doesn't deny it. He ignores the sharp ache in his chest, knows it'll ease eventually. "We have to stop, Sammy. It's not right, and it's only going to hurt worse the longer we let it go on." She opens her mouth to argue, but he says, "Don't, Sam. Please. I've never asked you for anything, but I'm asking you for this."

She looks like she's going to cry, and he knows (and he's pretty sure she knows) that if she does, he'll give in. But she sucks in a shaky breath, takes a long sip of her soda, and says, "I can't believe you thought buying me dinner would make this okay."

He leans back, tries to act casual, grateful that her aversion to being stared at keeps her from making a scene in public. It's what he'd banked on when he offered to take her to dinner ("Ooh, like a date? I've never been on a date, Dean." That had made him feel even worse, but he'd gritted his teeth and said, "Not like a date, brat. Like dinner."). He takes a deep breath and says, "If you're not gonna eat those fries, Sammy, pass 'em over here."

She blinks, sniffs once, and shoves her plate across the table.

They don't talk on the ride home. She locks herself in her bedroom with her books and her homework, and he sits down at the table to clean his guns, and he wonders why doing the right thing makes him feel so lousy.

*

It was weird when they started, and it's weird now that they've stopped. Dean's gotten so used to being able to touch her, kiss her, fuck her, and now he can't do any of those things. Sometimes, he thinks about telling her to forget it, he didn't mean it, he never wanted to stop, and please can they start again? But he can't. He won't.

She disappears from the breakfast table just as he stumbles into the kitchen, and comes to the dinner table worn out from track and whatever hand-to-hand Dad's drilling her in afterward. She's silent and shadow-eyed for a few weeks, mouth twisting in a sad, jaded smile when Dad asks how she's feeling. She sits on the far end of the couch now, or lies on the floor when they watch television, instead of cuddling up with Dean and sharing the bowl of popcorn.

He throws himself into hunting--Dad is glad of the backup, and Florida is full of freaky shit that keeps them busy. They take Sam with them sometimes--she's gotten good at knowing which battles to fight and which to let pass, and she's turning into a skilled hunter, as much as she'd like to deny it. Dean's less nervous each time--he knows she can take care of herself, and he and Dad are there if something goes wrong--but that sick feeling in his stomach never quite goes away, that worry that something's going to happen to her and he's not going to be able to stop it.

Maybe college really would be better--safer--for her. That thought makes him a little queasy, too, and not just because it's a betrayal of Dad and everything he's raised them to be, but because he knows, suddenly, he _knows_, with a certainty he's been trying to ignore, that she's going to leave. Maybe he's always known it.

He's making pretty decent money, taking extra shifts so he doesn't have to hang around the house and watch Sam avoid him, and one night he sneaks into her room while she's sleeping, slips two hundred dollars into her paperback copy of The Sound and the Fury\--he doesn't know what the deal is with applications and test fees, but more money's always better than less. And maybe if they spend some time apart, get some distance between them, her feelings will fade, and she'll find someone else to love. He's pretty sure his feelings aren't going anywhere; everything he is, is all wrapped up in Sam and has been since the day they brought her home from the hospital seventeen years ago. He tightens his fist at the thought, nearly rips the back of the book off at the thought of her with anyone else, but that's the only kind of normal he has to give her.

She rolls over, murmurs, "Dean?"

He swallows hard, whispers, "I'm here, Sammy." He brushes the hair back from her forehead, leans close to breathe her in and press a kiss to her temple.

"Okay." She settles back into sleep and he watches her for a few minutes before he goes to his own room and reminds himself that he's doing the right thing.

*

They're after a poltergeist in Jacksonville this time, so she sits and reads while Dean drives, the squeak of her highlighter against the glossy pages of her textbook loud and accusing in the unaccustomed silence.

He turns on the radio to drown her out, and that damn Santana song with the guy from that lame band Sam likes comes on.

"Man, Santana really sold out with this shit," he says.

"I like it."

"You would."

"It's fun." She taps her highlighter against her teeth. "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it. Dick."

He shoots her a glance. She's smirking at him. He can't help but grin back.

"It's no 'Black Magic Woman.'" He has good memories of that song on the radio while Melissa Greeley went down on him in the parking lot of Woodrow Wilson High School his junior year. Probably smarter not to mention that right now, though.

"And thank God for that."

"You just don't know good music when you hear it, Sammy."

"Whatever. Just because I like things that were recorded after I was born doesn't mean I don't know what's good." He grunts, and she slides a glance in his direction. "You know, he collaborated with Eric Clapton on that album, too." Says it like she's laying down the winning hand in a poker game. Says it like she's interested in teasing him again, in having a conversation, instead of the way it's been the past few weeks.

"Well, maybe it doesn't _completely_ suck," he concedes, and feels something ease in his chest when she laughs.

*

They spend the holidays with Pastor Jim again, and Dean kind of digs the tradition, though he'd never tell anyone that. He knows Sam likes it, too; she and Pastor Jim have long talks about books and philosophy and stuff Dean pretends not to be interested in, because that's Sammy's thing, and he knows she likes having something that's hers and no one else's.

They head west this time, land in Pocatello just in time to get Sam enrolled in her last semester of high school. Dad's unsure at first if they're even going to stay, so they end up living in a two-bedroom suite at the Thunderbird Motel for a couple of months, and by that point it's not even worth renting an apartment, Dad says, since they're going to be leaving after Sam graduates, anyway.

Dean works as a day laborer on a construction site near the university, but he and Dad both spend most of their time hunting--lots of restless spirits up this way, and a lot of miles logged between hunts and what's passing for home these days. When they're not hunting, he goes to the bars--it's a university town, and there are always frat boys to fleece and sorority girls to fuck, and it's so easy to lose himself in their sweet-smelling hair and supple bodies, and walk away after without a backward glance.

If Sam notices, she doesn't say anything. No smart remarks, no teasing, no disgusted looks at breakfast. He should be glad he doesn't have to deal with her shit, but he kind of misses it.

He tries not to think of what else he misses, not now that they've come out the other side and things have started to settle into some kind of normal between them. He'd thought, when he'd made the decision, that that was the hard part, but a two-bedroom suite isn't really big enough to give them any kind of distance. They're still together more often than not, and it's hard not to reach out and pull her into his lap when they're watching "Behind the Music," hard not to not climb in bed with her when he hears her tossing and turning restlessly at night, especially when he knows a surefire cure for her insomnia.

It's easier, then, to spend his nights elsewhere, even if sometimes it feels like a betrayal.

He gets into fights occasionally, because he sometimes forgets that the frat boys don't like losing both their girls and their money all at the same time, and he comes on a little strong. One night a couple months after they arrived in Pocatello, he's washing up after a fight (big, lumbering jock type, thought he could overpower Dean, who used his own strength against him), running cold water over his bruised knuckles and shaking his head at the drunken stupidity of certain members of his gender, when he hears Sam crying in the bedroom. The sound stops him dead, makes his stomach drop and his gorge rise.

He dries his hands quickly and moves into the bedroom.

"Sam, Sam, Sammy," he whispers, sitting down on the bed beside her. "What's wrong?" He expects her to brush him off, so he's kind of shocked when she flings herself into his lap and starts sobbing against his chest.

He grabs the box of tissues off the nightstand and feeds them to her two and three at a time, and she clings to him the way she used to when she was little and was afraid Dad wasn't going to come home from a hunt. He rubs circles on her back, trying to calm her down, and buries his face in her hair, breathing her in.

"Baby, what's wrong?" he asks again when her sobs have tailed off into hiccups and whimpers.

"There's this girl, Kathy, at school," she whispers, head still tucked beneath his chin, and he braces himself. Sam hasn't gotten picked on much since middle school--she's good at fitting in, at making friends, making herself invisible if she has to be, all the things Dean never quite managed when he was in school. "She's on the track team, too, does the long jump and the pole vault." She reaches for another tissue, blows her nose, and tosses it at the garbage pail. She misses, and they both ignore it. "You'd like her. She's almost as tall as I am, but busty. She's got red hair and blue eyes and legs...." She trails off, and he feels like he's missing an important piece of the puzzle.

"So, what? You both like the same guy and he chose her?" he guesses, ignoring the curl of jealousy in his belly at the thought of Sam liking some guy, and anger at the idea of the guy not liking her back. "Guys are stupid, you know. Think with our downstairs brains all the time. I can beat him up for you, if you want."

"No," she chokes out, and starts sobbing again.

He keeps rubbing her back. He _hates_ crying women, even when it's not his fault they're crying, and a crying Sammy is about ten million times worse, especially since he still doesn't know what's wrong. Or how to fix it.

"Okay, okay. I won't beat him up. You want that satisfaction yourself, huh?"

She gets hold of herself a second time, scrubs at her face with the back of her hand. "No," she says. She won't look at him, stares down at the soggy, snotty mess of tissues in her fist. "There's no guy."

"Okay, so, what? Did this Kathy chick insult your hair? Get a higher grade on her English paper? Gimme a little help here, Sammy."

"What's wrong with my hair?" It's weak, but the fact that she made the effort is good. She still won't look at him, though, and that worries him more than anything.

"You're getting a little shaggy," he starts, and she grunts and thwacks him one, which is another good sign.

"You're such a _jerk_."

"Yeah, but I'm your jerk," he says, and that gets him a teary smile. "Come on, Sammy, spill."

"We're--me and Kathy--we were friends. She was really nice to me when I started school here, and we ate lunch together, and her locker is next to mine in the girls' locker room, so we used to change together, and she would, when we changed, I thought she was--" She starts shredding the wad of tissues she's holding. "I thought she was flirting with me, and I liked her, and I tried to kiss her, and now she thinks I'm a ginormous freak." That sets her off again, even though he'd have thought she was all cried out.

And then what she's said sinks in, and he rests his chin on the top of her head and tries to process it.

"Okay," he says, mouth on autopilot while his brain catches up. "Okay. So. I normally don't hit chicks--well, unless they're evil--but we could totally prank her. Break into her house, put some Nair in her shampoo or something. Does she have a car? We could set her car on fire."

She pushes away, hits him again, flat of her palm against his chest. "Don't you understand? She's going to tell the whole school I'm some kind of lesbian freak."

"Well, you're definitely a freak, Sammy, but I got my doubts about the lesbian thing. You like dick too much to be totally gay." He stops, horrified that he actually said it out loud, and she makes a choking sound that might be laughter or might be disgust. He can't seem to stop talking. "Though I guess it would explain all the angry chick rock."

Another thump to his chest, and it's okay, because better an angry Sammy than a crying one. "_Dean_."

And yeah, okay, he certainly shouldn't know that about his kid sister, and he probably shouldn't have said it, either, but it's _true._

At least, he thinks it is.

He swallows hard, stomach dropping in sudden fear. "Sam. Sammy. You liked it, right? I didn't--It wasn't--I never meant to hurt--" The you gets swallowed when she kisses him, fierce and desperate, all wet heat and tongue and salt-sharp saliva. He closes his eyes, kisses her back with that same desperation, and God, maybe there really is something wrong with him, but he's _missed_ this, missed _her_, the way she tastes and smells and _feels_ when they're this close together and nothing can get between them.

"You never did," she whispers against his mouth, shifting so she can straddle him. "You never would."

He wishes he could be that sure.

It's so easy to hold her, to hold on, to slip his hands up under the t-shirt she's wearing to feel warm skin beneath his fingertips, as she rolls her hips and breathes in his gasp of relief.

It's her turn to gasp when he slides his hands around, thumbs brushing the undercurves of her breasts, and he pulls back, lifts her off his lap and onto the bed. Forces himself to say, "Sam, we can't."

"Even you don't want me anymore. I know you've been fucking around again," she says in a low, bitter voice, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm a freak."

"Yeah, but you're my freak." He forces a grin, trying to cajole an answering grin out of her.

Her mouth doesn't even twitch. "It's easy for you, isn't it?"

"None of this is easy for me," he answers, possibly the most honest he's ever been with her while he's not fucking her, letting his body say all the things he can't. He cups her cheek and she turns her face, presses a kiss to his palm. She takes his hand, slides her lips down to rest warm and wet on his wrist, between the bracelets she gave him for his birthday. His breath hitches, and he says, "Sam."

"It can be easy," she says, then touches her tongue to his pulse. "As easy as this." She pulls him close, and he lets her, lets himself lean into her, press her back against the pillows, fitting between her legs like he belongs there. Because she's right--this has always been the easy part, the part where it's just him and her against the darkness.

Her skin tastes like tears, like salt poured to protect them both. This is as close as he comes to true prayer--whispering her name against her lips--and to belief--in the heat of her cunt surrounding him, the shift and shudder of her muscles as they move together, and the arch of her back when she comes keening into his mouth.

He cradles her close when they're done, and she's asleep before he can even start to regret letting himself fall into her again, four months of trying to keep his hands to himself swept away by her tears.

*

As far as Dean knows, Sam's shunning only lasts about a week--some new scandal comes along to capture the attention of the kids at Hillsborough High, and Sam's back to being that weird girl on the track team. At least, that's what she tells him. She occasionally talks about another girl on the team, Stacy or Tracy or something, and someone named Taylor from her AP History class, but she never mentions Kathy again, and he doesn't ask.

He's sure now that she's planning to leave, has seen the fat envelopes stuffed into her backpack--of course, they all want her; why wouldn't they? She's practically a freaking genius. He'd never tell her how awesome that is, but he brags sometimes, to the guys he works with, to Bobby, to Pastor Jim. To Dad once or twice, who grins and claps his shoulder proudly. He catches her filling out forms once, but he doesn't ask about that either, and she doesn't volunteer anything. She closes herself off to him now, more than ever before, and he wonders if she's doing it for his protection or her own; either way, it's only making things worse as far as he's concerned.

He spends more time now training her, hours spent drilling her in hand-to-hand, always her weakest area, because if he's not going to be around to protect her, he needs to know she can protect herself.

Of course, protecting her has been hardwired into his brain, so the next time Dad takes them hunting--skinwalker in Reno--she freezes for just a second and Dean shoves her down, engages the thing himself. It tosses him like a ragdoll before Dad pumps its heart full of silver, and Dean can feel his ribs crack, the agony making him black out.

He loses the next few days in a haze of pain and narcotics, but he remembers the determined set of Dad's jaw, the scared, pinched look on Sam's paper white face, the sudden paleness making her eyes startlingly green. He remembers the ridiculously cheerful ER doctor babbling on about the possibility of a punctured lung that, thankfully, never does materialize, and who sends him home with a prescription for painkillers and admonitions to rest and let himself heal, and to be more careful on his motorcycle.

Sam slips into bed with him when she gets home from school each afternoon, the long line of her body pressing warm and soft against his good side, and it hurts a little less to breathe when she's there, though he can't tell her that.

"I'm fine," he lies, but she doesn't believe him, doesn't go away, so it's okay. It's worth the pain to be able to wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold her close, to be able to fall asleep and wake up beside her without feeling like it's wrong in any way.

Dad takes off to handle a black dog up in Great Falls that Saturday morning, and for the first time ever, before he goes, he hands the shotgun to Sam and says, "Watch out for your brother, will you?"

She squares her shoulders and takes the gun with a solemn look. "Yes, sir," she says, and for once, there's no anger or mockery in her tone.

Dean's propped up against some pillows, clicking through the channels, milking the situation for all it's worth. He makes Sammy bring him sodas with bendy straws, and generally orders her around until she snaps, "You need me to help you take a piss, too?" and throws a pillow at his head.

"Cranky girl," he says, catching the pillow and tucking it under his good arm. "I have the perfect cure."

"I'm not cranky," she lies. "I'm just tired. Some of us haven't been lying around on our asses for the past four days. Some of us were _worried_ about our stupid, overprotective brothers."

"You were worried? Oh, Sammy, that's so sweet," he teases, but the warmth in his chest isn't from the pain or the drugs. "Don't you know I'm indestructible?"

She rolls her eyes. "Then you don't need me waiting on you hand and foot. Maybe I'll go to the library."

"It's Saturday," he says, scandalized. "No books or homework or geeky shit today, Sammy. I have something way better planned."

She cocks her hip, rests a hand on it, looks like every waitress in every diner they've ever eaten dinner in, which makes him smile. "Oh, yeah?"

He hits TNT just as the voiceover comes on. "Yeah." He gestures towards the television. "_Star Wars_ marathon."

She laughs in disbelief. "You just said, 'no geeky shit,' Dean."

"Nothing geeky about Han Solo. Or Princess Leia in that bikini."

"Uh huh."

She comes close enough for him to grab her wrist--so strong and still so delicate--and pull her down onto the bed next to him. He grimaces when the bounce of the mattress jogs his ribs, but then she settles in, her head on his shoulder and her hand resting lightly on his belly. The familiar words scroll up the screen, and there's no place else he'd rather be right now than here.

*

Sam graduates from Hillsborough High three weeks after her eighteenth birthday. Dad takes them out to dinner to celebrate. They didn't do much for her birthday--Dad was gone on a hunt with Caleb, and Sam herself was buried in studying for finals. Dean couldn't really understand that--she'd already got the whole college thing in the bag, so it's not like those grades _mattered_, but Sammy's grades junkie, through and through.

She and Dad had actually agreed to postpone the celebration without any shouting. Dean's still worried one or the other of them might be possessed.

They dress up and go out for graduation--Dad's in a jacket and tie, and Dean's got on his nice khakis and a blue button down shirt Sam picked up for him at the Gap for his birthday and has bitched at him for not wearing since, and she's got a sleeveless yellow dress on, with a skirt that shows off way too much leg. Every eye in the place follows her as the maître d' leads them to a table, and Dean's torn between being proud and wanting to hide her away, because this is it, this is the big deal. She's eighteen and she's a high school graduate--she can be whatever she wants now, and he knows the last thing she wants to be is Sam Winchester, demon hunter.

Once they're settled at the table, Dad orders a bottle of wine and pours some for each of them.

Dean raises his glass and says, "I'm proud of you, Sammy."

They clink glasses, delicate crystal chiming like bells, and Dad looks startled for a second before he says, "Me, too."

Sam flushes pink and laughs, lips bright with wine and lipstick, the happiest Dean's seen her in a long time. Maybe this will work, he thinks. Maybe we can make this work.

But Dad's never been one to let the moment stand, or maybe he's just oblivious, so focused on the hunt that he can't let it go, even for one night. "We're leaving for Green Bay in the morning," he says. "Caleb has a job for us. Said it might be a water wraith."

Sam sets her glass down hard, her wine swirling dangerously and her smile disappearing. Dean forces himself not to flinch. Instead, he catches the waiter's eye and calls him over.

"What are the specials?" he asks, though he knows he's probably just going to order steak.

The tension defused for the moment, Dean takes a sip of wine and starts mentally cataloguing what needs to be packed and what can be left behind. It keeps him calm while he waits for Sam to explode. He won't be sorry to leave Pocatello and that goddamn motel room. It'll be nice to be back on the road, doing what they do best.

They make it through dinner without a fight, though Dad drinks too much wine and Sam barely cracks a smile, even though Dean's totally working the charm. They decide to skip coffee and dessert, because Sam can't open her gift in public, anyway. On his way home from work, Dean had picked up a couple of CDs he thinks she'll like, as well, and a carton of ice cream. It'll be more than enough.

Back at the motel, Dad slips his tie off and pours himself some scotch, while Dean puts the ice cream out to soften and sets the coffee brewing. He digs Sam's presents out of the hiding place and hands the big one to her with a grin.

She laughs at the Star Wars wrapping paper, and tears it open slowly, frown of concentration on her face.

The box is fine wood, and when she flips it open, the scythe is nestled against green felt, blade sharp and gleaming.

"You know," she says, standing and dropping the box onto the table, "I have an Amazon wishlist. This wasn't on it." She stalks into her bedroom and slams the door shut behind her.

"That went well," he mutters, still holding the wrapped box with the CDs in his hand.

Dad looks like he can't decide if he wants to start yelling or finish his drink.

Dean gets up, puts a hand on his shoulder, and says, "She'll come around." The lie tastes bitter on his tongue, but he forces it out. "I'm just gonna--" He jerks his head towards the door and Dad nods. He's pouring another two fingers of scotch into his glass when Dean walks out.

Dean doesn't know how long he sits outside, the glass of the windshield warm against his back, the stars popping out as the night falls. He doesn't know why he doesn't just get in the car and drive away. He's thinking about it, watching the lightning bugs fly around the motel parking lot and listening to the crickets hum, when Sam comes outside. She's still in her yellow dress, looks like a lit candle in the twilight.

"So you know that episode of 'Star Trek' with the mirror universe, where you can tell Spock is evil because he's got a goatee?" she says, sliding up onto the car next to him. He nods once. "Would you believe me if I told you that that was evil Sam from an alternate universe in there?"

"You don't have a goatee."

"The goatee is a metaphor."

He laughs, can't help it, can't stay mad at her. "Seen weirder shit," he says, nodding again. He glances over at her and she's smiling sheepishly, like she really is sorry.

"It's a beautiful knife. Thank you."

"We had it made special. Caleb has a friend who makes really cool weapons. You should see some of the shit on his website."

She nods, and lays her head on his shoulder. They sit in comfortable silence for a little bit, staring up at the stars.

"Take me for a ride, Dean."

"Dad?"

"He's got Johnny Walker keeping him company tonight."

"Whose fault is that?"

She sighs. "Dean, please?"

He growls low in annoyance at her, at himself for not being able to say no to her. "Fine. Get in the car."

"Can I drive?" She slides off the hood, practically bouncing.

Well, except on this one topic. "No."

"Dean--"

"No."

Another sigh. "Fine."

He takes her for ice cream, even though there's a perfectly good carton of vanilla fudge ripple back at the motel. Instead of heading straight back afterwards, he pulls into a secluded area behind the strip mall, and turns the car off.

When he kisses her, she tastes of cold and chocolate, and she laughs into his mouth. She cups his face with sticky fingers, and he sucks each one into his mouth, licking them clean as she giggles. She slides into his lap and they spend some quality time making out. He thinks he could do this forever, just him and Sam in the car, slick wet slide of tongue and lip against soft, sensitive skin, the gasp and moan and whisper of her voice speaking his name, and the low growl of her name in his mouth when he tells her how beautiful she is, and how much he wants her.

"Backseat," he says hoarsely, and watches as she swings her long legs over the back of the front seat to get there, skirt riding up to show him her panties. She scoots back against the door and he kneels between her thighs.

He goes slow, dragging her dress up her body, raising goosebumps and kissing them away. He pulls it off, tosses it onto the front seat, and does the same with her bra. His shirt follows, still buttoned and yanked up over his head in impatience to feel her skin warm against his with nothing in between.

Once he has that, though, he takes his time, presses long, lingering kisses to her mouth, her neck, her tits. Her hands stroke over his shoulders and back, and she asks questions she already knows the answers to.

"Where'd this one come from?" she asks, thumbing the thin, white-pink line of a scar on her bicep.

He leans in to trace his tongue over it. "Black dog, down in Abilene. Knocked you out of the way when you froze."

She folds her leg up and points to the small scar bisecting her kneecap. "This one?"

"You fell off your bike when you were twelve. There was glass in the street, cut right through your jeans." He runs the tip of his tongue over the mark, remembering the blood on her skin, the taste of it on his lips--though she was too old by then to believe anyone could kiss it better, he still wanted to, and she still let him. "Scared the shit out of me." He holds her leg there, blows a raspberry against the soft skin on the inside of her thigh before licking at it, changing her giggles to gasps. He breathes her in, presses his mouth to the crease where her leg joins her body, salt-tang bitter and addictive on his tongue, the taste of the slow, heavy pulse of need beating through him.

She pulls him up for a kiss, tongue thick and sweet like honey in his mouth, and wraps her leg around his hip, rubbing against the bulge of his erection, making them both pant a little. Then she ghosts a hand down his chest, finds the old scar just below his ribs, thin white line no one else would ever notice.

"Where'd you get this one?" she says, fingers tracing it lightly enough to tickle, making him suck in a surprised breath.

"You did that, Sammy, first time you ever handled a knife." He hadn't expected her to lunge, hadn't moved out of the way fast enough; it had looked worse than it was, not very deep, but he'd bled like a stuck pig. He hadn't expected it to scar, either, but he'd learned early on that there wasn't always a way to tell with these things. She'd cried, then, cried the way she rarely did when she hurt herself, and he'd spent more time comforting her than he had bandaging himself up. It's not the only scar she's left on him, though it's the only one she can see. He hopes it's the only one she knows about.

She bends forward, licks the scar, the flat of her tongue warm and wet on his skin, and he shivers. She slides her lips up, tip of her tongue darting out at random intervals now, no pattern he can find.

"What're you doing?"

She looks up, eyes dark and bright. "Counting freckles."

"Sam--"

She wraps a hand around the nape of his neck, pulls him in, and rains kisses on his face. "Want to kiss them all, every last inch of you," she says before she sucks his lower lip into her mouth, nips it with her teeth before letting go, her hands finally unzipping his khakis and slipping inside to stroke him.

"Might take some time," he manages, finding a condom before he shoves his pants and boxers out of the way.

"Be worth it, though," she answers with a grin as she wriggles out of her underwear and guides him inside her.

"Yeah," he breathes, trying not to read anything into it, trying not to hope she'll stay, that he can _make_ her stay if he says or does the right thing, some mysterious ritual he hasn't figured out yet, but will if she gives him enough time and clues, just like a hunt, but so much more important and dangerous.

He kisses her softly as he thrusts, long slow strokes that have her gasping and pleading with him to speed up, her fingers slipping down between them to circle her clit. He loves the feel of her cunt tight and slick around him, the way she keeps talking, her voice breaking on his name when she's close, the sudden faraway look in her eyes before they flutter shut as she comes, muscles clenching around him, holding him so tight and deep inside her, his favorite place to be. He picks up the pace, thrusts harder and faster, desperate to lose himself in the short burst of heated oblivion when the world disappears and there's nothing but fierce pleasure so good it steals his breath.

When he's done, he slumps against her, sweaty, sticky, and satisfied, all the tension of the evening fucked away. She wraps her arms around him, won't let him pull away, though it can't be comfortable for her, with the door digging into her back.

"Dean," she says in that awed yet sleepy tone he never gets tired of hearing. "Dean, I--"

"I know, baby," he whispers against the sweaty hair at her temple. "I know."

Finally, he moves, gets rid of the condom, starts pulling his clothes back on. She lies there, looking well and truly fucked, her eyelids heavy and her mouth still red and swollen.

"We better get back," he says. "Got some packing to do."

She pushes a hand through her hair, takes a deep breath, and says, "We don't have to."

He knows he heard right the first time but he can't quite wrap his sex-fogged mind around it. "What?" He hands her the dress, wills her to put it on so he can pay attention to the conversation he doesn't want to have.

She yanks the dress on over her head, but ignores the bra and panties, which really doesn't make it easier to focus.

"We don't have to go back."

"Sam--"

She looks eager, earnest, her eyes wide and bright now, her voice pleading. "We could just drive away right now. We could go anywhere. I bet Dad wouldn't even _notice_ until sometime tomorrow."

The tension comes flooding back, stiffening his shoulders and throbbing behind his eyes, all his contentment washed away.

"Sam, don't talk about Dad like that. He's our father, and he deserves our respect. _Of course_, he would notice." He shakes his head. "I don't know what your problem is, Sammy. I don't know why I even thought--" He stops, because he knew it was dumb to even think about hoping, but he can't help it where she's concerned.

"We could do it, Dean. You know we could."

"No, we couldn't. It's not safe."

"That's such bullshit. How is facing a water wraith or a pack of hellhounds safer than going somewhere far away from here and being normal? That doesn't even make any sense."

"Give up on normal, Sam. We can't ever have it." He's so tired of this argument, has run out of ways to explain it, and anyway, it wouldn't matter if he'd found the perfect explanation, because she doesn't _want_ to understand. "We know too much. Don't you get it? We can't--_I_ can't walk away, not when I know other people, other _families_, need our help. But if you want to be a selfish little brat--" He stops himself again, afraid if he tells her she can go alone, she will. He takes a deep breath. "We have to go back."

She climbs into the front seat and stares out the window as they drive back to the motel. They don't speak. There's nothing left to say.

They pretend it never happened, but Dean knows the clock is ticking, and ignoring it won't make it stop.

*

It's a kelpie, not a water wraith, in Green Bay, and then a poltergeist in Wabash. Powries in Pittsburgh, a shapeshifter in Charleston, and vengeful spirits all along the way. June slips by in miles logged and monsters killed, in hours spent sneaking off with Sam, making every moment count, trying to memorize the soft curve of her hip, the low pitch of her laugh, the way the late afternoon light makes her eyes more green than brown when she comes apart in his arms.

Dad's drinking again, during the downtime between hunts, which is always when he's at his worst, and Sam's alternating between bitchy and sullen, as if she's permanently stuck in PMS-mode, and Dean sometimes wishes he could wash his hands of both of them, but mostly he wishes they could see how alike they are. That family--their family--is more important than college or even hunting, and that if they'd both just give a little, everything would be much easier. But they don't listen, don't seem to care. Both of them are dead-set on having their own way, and neither seems to give a damn about him, stuck in the middle and trying to keep the peace.

Dad's temper frays early and often, and he disappears for three days in Tulsa, and for a week in Galveston.

He takes off again when they hit Shreveport, leaving them to deal with a ghost wreaking havoc in one of the riverboat casinos. They pose as a couple to investigate, and Dean realizes how easy it would be to become the people they're pretending to be. For a second, he even thinks about doing it, but then reality sets in.

They're back in Florida for the fourth of July, being eaten alive by mosquitoes when they're not melting from the heat, hunting some kind of swamp monster in Lake Okeechobee. Dad and Sam make it almost all the way through the town's fireworks display before they start fighting, and between them Dean feels every barb and sharp remark like they're aimed at him.

Dad stomps off to the bar to drink Jack Daniels with the good ole boys, muttering about stubborn women who don't know what's best for them, and Dean wants to bitch Sam out for not being able to shut the fuck up for once in her life, for always pushing, but he can't, because he doesn't know when she's going to leave, and he doesn't want to push her into going.

Instead, they sit and watch the finale of the fireworks show, oohing and aahing with the crowd, and Sam looks so happy it makes Dean's chest ache. Then she goes down on him in the car, her hand slipping down into her shorts to finger herself while her mouth is tight and wet on his dick, and hotter than the humid summer air heavy on his skin. He tangles a hand in her hair and closes his eyes, knows the shape of her bones in his fingertips, and he comes like one of those mortars, bursting into a thousand glittering shards of light and slowly floating back to earth.

Every time they fuck now, he thinks it could be the last, and he can't bring himself to stop, though he knows he should. Knows that soon enough, it won't be up to him at all, and that makes it harder and easier all at once.

The middle of August finds them out on the west coast, in Aberdeen--rumors of a sasquatch--and when Sam's not talking about Billy Gohl, she's babbling about Kurt Cobain. Dean doesn't know why he's surprised at how morbid she is sometimes.

The rumors turn out to be false, and Dad's out getting drunk with one of the hunters he knows in the area. Sam's at the library, doing God only knows what, and Dean is stuck in the motel room, bored, and sick of the rain.

He pulls out his throwing knives--Dad thinks it's mostly a waste of time, but Dean's gotten pretty good at both circus and combat-style throwing. It's not the same as having a well-loved gun in his hand, but he likes the rigor of it, the attention the knives demand, edges honed sharp and metal warm from his touch, the way his focus narrows to the knife and the target.

He loses track of time, and he's still at it when Sam comes back.

She leans against the desk, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed at the ankles. The look on her face is intent, hungry, and she says, "Do that again," when he's finished.

"C'mere." He grabs her hand, pulls her upright. "You trust me?"

"You gonna throw knives at me?"

"Why the hell would I wanna do that?"

"In the movies--"

"Yeah, and at the circus, too, which you'd know if you hadn't spent the whole time hiding from the clowns like a baby."

"Shut up."

"I'm just saying. You'll face werewolves without flinching, but clowns--"

"Clowns are evil, Dean. Everyone knows that. Except you, apparently."

She says it completely seriously, too, which would make him laugh in other circumstances, but right now he ignores that, too busy positioning her in the spot he'd been standing in, about ten feet from the target, and she lets him.

"Here." He puts the knife, steel warm and smudged from his fingers, into her hand, guides her arm into the right position. "And throw." The knife falls short of the target, and he snorts in disgust. "Come on, Sam, I know you can do better than that." She's always been more interested in knives than in guns. "Didn't you throw javelin in track?"

"You know I didn't."

"Well, maybe you should have. Could be a useful skill for a hunter to have." He puts another knife in her hand. "Again."

This time, she throws, and the point of the knife is embedded in the target, and he presses another one into her hand. It joins the other in the target, quivering a little from the force of the throw.

"Maybe I don't judge everything I do by how useful it'll be in hunting."

"Maybe you should," he repeats.

She turns to him, mouth open to argue, and he kisses her. He doesn't want to hear her reject what he has to teach her, the only life he has to give her. He sucks her tongue into his mouth, hands tightening on her hips, pulling her flush against him. Awareness that every day brings the day she'll leave closer makes him rougher than he normally is, seeking to hold and mark what's his, make sure she never forgets, though he knows she will. Knows she should.

They stumble around a little, and then she's sitting on the desk and he's standing between her knees, hands cupping her face, thumbs brushing over the smooth, soft skin of her cheeks, the bump of the mole by her nose. She wraps her legs around him, urging him closer, her hands slipping under his t-shirt to glide along his belly and back, soft, quick touches that make him breathless and needy.

It's warm and it's hot, two different kinds of heat burning inside him, one purely the physical, and he can live without that if he has to, can get the sex anywhere, though it's never as good because it lacks that other warmth he only ever feels with her. And it's not enough--he wants to be inside her, wants to hold her inside of him, twined together until there's no separating them, no way for anyone or anything to take her away.

She undoes his belt and fly, shoves her hand down into his boxer-briefs to curl around him, and he fumbles for the condom in his wallet before he lets his jeans fall to his ankles. She's as desperate as he is, breath coming in short, quick bursts against his overheated skin, the air conditioning in the room not enough to cool this down, even if it was capable of producing more than mildly cold air. She's got to be counting the days down, too, on some secret calendar she's got stashed somewhere, red X's through all their days together and nothing but a blank future ahead. He can't think about that right now, though, not while she's shimmying out of her jeans and panties and pulling him close.

He tries to go slow, tries to memorize every gasp and flutter and moan she makes as he fucks her, but fear makes him drive into her, fingers stroking at her clit. He tells her how tight she is, how wet and hot, teases her about how much she loves having his dick in her cunt, how much he likes watching himself slide in and out, better than any porn he's ever seen, his voice low and hoarse and filthy. She takes it all and begs for more, breathlessly chanting his name like it's the name of God, voice breaking on it when she comes, clenching tight around him and shuddering in his arms. He follows, world whiting out with pleasure, and for a few minutes nothing exists but him and her, and the sticky-hot way they're clinging to each other, his cheek resting on the top of her head, her face nestled in the crook of his neck. He tries to pretend it's not anything like goodbye.

He loves the way she's so sleepy and content afterwards, like a cat lying in the sun, loves the way she lets him hold her instead of trying to break free.

"Dean," she says, voice thick with satisfaction, "when summer's over--"

He kisses her again, the easiest way ever to end a conversation with her, and she sighs into his mouth, shoulders tensing for a second then relaxing. He knows they'll eventually have to have a talk--possibly A Talk, about Feelings, even--but he's going to put it off as long as humanly possible.

*

Dean can hear them shouting when he gets out of the car, the familiar rhythm of their fighting almost comforting, until the meaning of Sam's words penetrates--I got a scholarship, and I'm going. You can't stop me.

Even knowing it was coming, he's not prepared for how much it hurts, nothing near as easy as a knife sliding cool and clean into his belly; more like the burning punch of a bullet to the heart, all pain and fire and gasping for breath that won't come. He's proud of her, too; it's swamped under by the hurt, but the pride is there, fierce and sharp like a knot of razors in his chest.

And Dad's spitting ultimatums in return, anger and fear and desperation to keep her safe goading him to say the words guaranteed to drive her away, words that will echo in Dean's head for years--If you leave, don't come back\--proof of what Dean's always known, that even love has its limits and that words, once spoken, can't be taken back. Better not to speak at all. Dad, of all people, should know better, after the hours he's spent drilling them in rituals and exorcisms and spells; he taught them that the power of words is never something to be taken lightly, and that words spoken in anger have multiple layers of strength.

Dean gets between them, guilty that he wasn't here when it started, that maybe he could have kept it from going down like this, but it's too late. Maybe it's always been too little, too late, and he's never been enough to hold them together when they try to tear each other apart--they've been heading towards this fight for years, no detours or alternate destinations allowed.

She turns away, throwing Dad's words back in his face--Fine! I'm going and I won't come back!\--and grabs her duffel bag from beside the bed. Dean can see it's all packed and ready. _Fuck._ He'd hoped she'd give him some warning first, though he knows that's not the Winchester way--they're always prepared to leave at a moment's notice, to leave behind everything if they have to. He's just not used to being the thing that gets left behind.

She slings the bag over her shoulder and storms out of the room in a righteous fury, and Dad just stares after her like he can't quite believe it's happening, like it's some kind of nightmare he can't wake up from.

But Dean knows it's not a dream, can feel the sweat trickling down his back from the summer heat, hear the low hum of the air conditioner and the buzz of a mosquito lazily hovering in the warm air of the room, smell the take-out he's just dropped onto the table in grease-stained paper bags, and he knows now it's going to be left to sit uneaten all night. He wishes Dad would snap out of it, say something, _do something_, before she's too far gone to bring back. If she isn't already.

Dad looks at him, eyes dark with regret and something that might be fear. He scrubs a hand that trembles a little over his face, like he's just waking up, and his voice is hoarse when he says, "Go after her, Dean. Make sure she's--"

"Yeah, Dad. Of course." Dean turns and heads back out into the early evening heat. Sam's halfway across the parking lot, heading for the road. "Sammy, wait."

She stops and lets the bag slide down her shoulder into her hand, but doesn't turn to face him. He knows she's pissed at him, too, thinks he should have defended her, supported her, or maybe she wants him to beg her to stay. Maybe both. Sam's always wanted more than he could give her, and he's given her everything he's got.

"Sammy," he says again, reaching out to touch her arm. "When were you planning to tell me?"

She purses her lips, annoyed. "When were you planning to ask?"

He rubs his jaw, because he doesn't want to fight, not now, not like this, even though he feels like she's gouged a hole in his chest where his heart should be.

"I'm asking now."

"Well, I'm telling you now." She takes a deep, shaky breath, shoves a hand through her hair, already darkening with sweat at the temples in the Arizona heat. "I'm going to California, Dean. Stanford. It's practically Ivy. They gave me a full ride--tuition, housing, the whole deal."

He doesn't even try to smile, though he knows he should--smile and tell her how proud he is, how much he wants this for her, really he does. But not like this. Never like this.

Instead, he grabs her bag. He expects her to fight, but she doesn't; she lets him take it and sling it over his shoulder. It's not as heavy as he expected, and he wonders what else she's leaving behind.

"Come on," he says. "I'll drive you to the station." It's the closest he can come to congratulations or any of the other things he knows he should say--any of the things _normal_ people would say--and he hopes she understands.

She doesn't say anything, just follows him back to the car, maybe the last time she'll ever follow him anywhere, but he can't think about that right now. When they're in the car, she pulls a tape out of her bag and shoves it into the tape deck, and he lets her, doesn't even complain when the familiar opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blare from the speakers.

It's only about ten minutes to the bus depot, and it feels both longer and shorter, music only making the silence between them harder to bear.

When he pulls into the parking lot, she turns to look at him, finally, and says, "You could come with. Get an apartment, get a job." He shakes his head, won't look at her. She keeps talking, voice intense and shaky. "Have a life, Dean. A normal life. You and me." She reaches out, cups his jaw, traces his lips with her thumb. "We can start over in a place where nobody knows us."

"Baby, I can't. You know that." He looks at her, then, mirrors her gesture, soft skin of her cheek warm against his palm. "This isn't part of normal," he says. "It can't be." He doesn't say, _I_ can't be, but it means the same thing. He takes one of the bracelets she gave him and slips it off his wrist and onto hers, the only bond and protection he can give her. "Take care of yourself, Sammy." He wants to tell her to call, to write, to stay in touch, but he knows she won't, not after what Dad said. Not after she's asked him to come with her and he's said no.

She nods. "I figured that's what you'd say, but I had to ask." Her lower lip trembles and the tears in her eyes spill over, hot and salty on his tongue as he kisses her goodbye, trying to say everything he can't say in words, about how much he loves her and needs her, how he knows she has to go and hates that she does. How she'll always have someplace to come back to as long as he's alive, and that Dad didn't really mean it, and please don't go, all wrapped up in the stroke of his tongue over hers, the soft ragged panting of their shared breath.

"Jerk," she says when she pulls back from the kiss.

"Brat," he answers, smearing a tear away with his thumb.

He kisses her again, softly, gently, press of lips on lips with no tongue at all, and doesn't flinch when she opens the door and gets out of the car. He watches her walk into the bus station, shoulders square even under the weight of her bag. He watches until she's out of sight, and he doesn't leave until his hands have stopped shaking, and Kurt Cobain swears he doesn't have a gun.

When he licks his lips, all he tastes is cherry Chapstick, and nothing of Sam at all.

*

**Epilogue**

_April 2006_

"I can't believe you fucking shot me," he mutters, and then hisses in pain as she digs out bits of rock salt from his skin with the tweezers. And it wasn't just the once, either--she pulled the trigger four times. He doesn't mention that, though.

"I said I was sorry!" Her voice is shrill and hurts his ears, but her hands are gentle.

He takes another sip of bourbon, closes his eyes and tips his head back in exhaustion, trying to ignore the pain. "Just forget it."

"Dean--"

"I said, forget it. It wasn't you; it was Ellicott's ghost. I understand." And he means it, mostly. He just wants to fall into bed and forget the whole thing ever happened, erase the image of her standing over him and pulling the trigger again and again, angry sneer on her bloodied face, the sound of her voice saying hateful things. "Are you done?"

She jerks her hands away. "Yeah, I guess."

"I'm gonna go take a shower." He heaves himself up out of the chair, feeling a million years old, weary down to his bones. She looks like he just kicked her puppy, and he brushes a hand through his hair, shakes his head. "It's okay, Sam. Go to bed. Everything will be fine in the morning." It's not a lie if he believes it, right?

He drags his ass into the shower, lets the hot water ease some of the ache in his muscles, wash away the smell of smoke and dirt and rotted flesh, lets the water drown out the things she said, daddy's little soldier, can't think for yourself, pathetic. He'd never thought she'd hated him that much, but given some of his fuck-ups, he can't really blame her. And she knows exactly which words to use to hurt him--that's one thing that hasn't changed at all. He leans his forehead against the cool tile, forces himself to think of anything and everything except what actually happened.

When he comes out of the bathroom, she's asleep--or doing a damn fine job of faking it--curled up in a ball under the covers of the bed nearest the windows. He stumbles to the other bed, which is closest to the bathroom, and collapses into it. They've been sleeping in the same bed since St. Louis ("I knew it wasn't you," she'd repeated over and over, fingers curled in his t-shirt, thumb rubbing over his amulet as if for luck; he'd held her close and whispered that everything was going to be all right, that nothing was going to hurt her while he was around--it worked when she was two and it works now that she's twenty-two, and he'll believe it as long as she does, knows she sleeps better when he's right there to soothe her after her nightmares, that she always has), but he feels the need for space tonight, doesn't want to fight her for the covers and take an elbow to his already sore chest. Feels like redrawing some of the lines they've started erasing since she's been back, needs the clarity of being on one side while she's on the other.

He falls asleep to the sound of her breathing, and wakes to the sound of her on the phone. The tone of her voice confirms who it is even before she says the word, "Dad."

There's no reasoning with her after that, nothing in her head but the need to get to California, to avenge Jess, and it's like dealing with Dad all over again.

They're nearly to Burkitsville when she turns to him and says, "Dean, if this demon killed Mom and Jess, and Dad's closing in, we've gotta be there. We've gotta help."

"Dad doesn't want our help."

"I don't care."

"He's given us an order." He doesn't know why he says it--Sam hasn't cared about following Dad's orders since she was twelve.

"We don't always have to do what he says."

He tightens his hands on the steering wheel, skin pulling white over the knuckles, then forces himself to unclench, tries to sound reasonable. They're both adults, right? Should be able to have a reasonable conversation. "Sam, Dad is asking us to work jobs, to save lives. It's important."

"I understand. Believe me, I understand." She shifts to face him, folds one long leg up underneath her. "But I'm talking one week here, man. To get answers. To get revenge."

Dean shakes his head, because as much as she seems to have changed, she really hasn't. "You're a selfish bitch, you know that? You just do whatever you want. Don't care what anybody thinks."

She sucks in a breath, nods, and looks away for a second. "That's what you really think?"

The words are out before he can stop them. "Yes, it is."

"Well, then, this selfish bitch is going to California."

He flashes a nervous, cajoling grin at her. "Come on, you're not serious."

"I _am_ serious."

"It's the middle of the night! In the middle of nowhere!" She just stares at him, jaw set mulishly, until he breaks. "Fine. But I'm taking you to the nearest bus station." Because there's no way in hell he's leaving her in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, no matter what she thinks or says. "Don't thank me," he mutters.

Her mouth quirks into a half-grin now that she's got her way. "I wasn't planning to."

"I want you to make sure Dad knows I had nothing to do with this brilliant plan."

"I'm sure he'll know without my telling him."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Dean, the day you don't follow that man's orders is the day the world ends."

His hands tighten on the steering wheel again, but all he says is, "Whatever. It's your ass on the line," and turns up the radio.

He thinks he should be used to her leaving by now, but it stings worse than a blast of rock salt to the chest, which, also thanks to her, he now knows stings like a motherfucker. At least last time, he'd known it was coming; this time, it's like a sucker punch to a barely healed wound. In the six months they've been on the road together, he'd started to relax, get comfortable, started to think she was going to stay. It was a mistake, and this is why.

He heads to Burkitsville anyway, holding onto the job because it's the only thing he has left, but he's gotten used to having her with him again, and now it's weird that she's gone. He's off his game and he knows it--he's always been at his best as part of a team; when she was at school, and he'd started hunting alone, he'd had to recalibrate his timing, his reactions, had to learn to focus, to not always be keeping track of exactly where Sam was and how quickly he could get to her if she wasn't where she was supposed to be. Since she's been back, he's fallen into older, more comfortable habits, and it's startling to be alone again. But he can actually help these people in a way he hasn't been able to help her at all, since Jess died.

At first, she'd locked herself in the bathroom every night and cried. He doesn't know if she'd thought he couldn't hear, or what, but it made him feel like something inside him was breaking every time she did it, because it's the one thing he can't fix--he can't bring Jess back, can't kill the thing that killed her, couldn't even find Dad to figure out what it was until he called.

All he could do was keep searching, keep hunting, and keep her safe with him, and now that's gone too. And if she and Dad kill this demon, she'll be gone as well, back to school, and away from this life for good. He knows he should want that for her--has always wanted that for her--but now that he's got her back, he doesn't know if he can take losing her a second time.

Because he loves having her with him, even though she makes him crazy sometimes, with her bitching about his food and his music, about the girls he hooks up with (and he's not thinking about her, he's _not_; that's over and done, and she acts like it never even happened, so he does, too; never mind the way he wakes up hard and aching in the morning, her body soft and warm and familiar against him) and the hunts he finds.

Her absence keeps him awake, even after the adrenaline rush of the night's work subsides; he's gotten used to having her in the bed with him again, used to the sound of her breath in his ears and the beat of her heart beneath his hand, and sleep is a long time coming.

When she was away at Stanford, he'd never stopped feeling like a piece of him was missing, never stopped expecting her to be there in the room when he came back with coffee (always two or three cups, never just the one, and he always ended up drinking it himself, even if he'd already doctored hers up with milk and sugar), and it was weeks before he'd stopped telling her things she wasn't there to hear, months before he stopped dialing her number and then tossing the phone onto the passenger seat without pressing the 'talk' button.

He can't do that again.

He thinks about the ways she's changed in the time she was away, and the ways she's just the same. She insists on being called Sam now, instead of Sammy, and he knows names have power, and in naming herself, it's like she's trying to banish the chubby twelve-year-old she used to be, her life as a hunter, the girl he'd known before she left. And as stupid as it sounds, he feels like he's just getting to know her again, know Sam instead of Sammy, now that she's coming out of her mourning for Jess and letting him see who she's become--in whispered conversations in the warm darkness of their bed, as much as in the way she laughs at his lame jokes and mocks his music, and the way they stand shoulder to shoulder when they hunt. She's softer in some ways, more brittle in others, strange and familiar all at the same time, but still and always his sister, the girl he loves the most. Not that he'd ever tell her that. He used to think she knew, but he can't tell anymore.

He doesn't want to lose her for good, even if she does go back to school. The first time he'd gone out to California to check up on her, he'd seen how happy she was, how she'd found whatever normal she'd been looking for and made it her own. And he wants to be part of that this time around, wants to be able to show up and crash on her couch, threaten her boyfriends with his shotgun and ogle her girlfriends, convince her that rare cheeseburgers at three am is the food of the gods, and that there has never been anything finer than Led Zeppelin on the stereo and the wind in their hair as they fly down the highway in the Impala.

He starts to dial once, twice, three times, before he decides to man up and just do it. He can picture her face, frowning at first, ready to argue, and then when he tells her he's proud of her, has always admired the way she stands up to Dad, he can hear the smile in her voice, and it makes him feel good.

Later, when he's tied up in the orchard with no rescue plan in sight, waiting for that fugly-ass scarecrow to come and get him and Emily, he's especially glad he did it.

And then Sam shows up to save the day. Relief stronger than fear floods him, though he plays it off; he knows she isn't buying his nonchalance, but that's okay, too, because she's _here_ and she's _safe_, and she stopped being fooled by him when she was sixteen.

There isn't a lot of time to stand around shooting the shit, though, until after they set the tree on fire and put Emily on a bus out of town.

As they walk back to the car, he turns to Sam and says, "So, you gonna buy yourself a ticket? Or can I drop you off somewhere?"

"No, I think you're stuck with me." She rests a hand on the roof of the car, long fingers winter-pale against the shiny black paint.

He breathes out in relief, thankful for the reprieve and trying to hide it. "What made you change your mind?"

"I didn't. I still wanna find Dad. And you're still a pain in the ass." Dean nods and snorts, not disagreeing. "But, Jess and Mom--they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me--we're all that's left. So, if we're gonna see this through, we're gonna do it together."

It's not a promise to stay forever, but it's more than she's given him before, and he'll take it happily.

They drive for a few hours, Sam drowsing in the passenger seat as Dean drums along with Keith Moon, relaxing into the rightness of things. There's nothing like the buzz of a successful hunt, and it's even better now with Sam beside him, now that she's going to stay.

It's early afternoon when he pulls off the interstate and into the parking lot of a Motel 6, tired and dirty and ready for a shower and a nap.

They rarely unpack--they almost never stay anywhere long enough to make it worth the effort--but Sam always manages to clutter up whatever counter space is available in the bathroom with her stuff, stuff he hasn't bought in the past three and a half years, but which he buys now without even thinking about it--a bottle of Johnson's baby lotion, a tube of Noxzema, some kind of spray-in conditioner, a card of black bands for her hair--falling back into the habits of a lifetime of grocery shopping.

She lets him have the shower first--he stinks of rank sweat and dirt and smoke from the fire--and he's using her shampoo instead of the stuff the motel provided, when she says, "Hey," and pushes the curtain aside to climb in with him.

"Sam--"

She gives him a smile he can't quite decipher, and reaches up to scrub her fingers through his soapy hair, then trail her thumb over his cheek and down his nose. He rinses his face to avoid a mouthful of shampoo.

"You could have died last night."

"Part of the job, Sammy. You know that."

"Yeah, but if I'd been there--" She looks away, grabs the soap, starts lathering him up.

"Sam, don't--" He's not sure if he means the way she's touching him or what she's saying.

"I can't, I can't lose you, too," she says, spreading soap over his chest and shoulders. He tries to keep his cock from reacting, but he can't, even though her touches aren't particularly sexual. It's been so long, and he's pretended he doesn't want her like this anymore, but his body doesn't lie.

She washes him gently, thoroughly, and then hands him the soap and lets him do the same for her. When he smoothes his hands over her belly, she quivers, puts her hands on his shoulders.

"Dean," she says, and slides her hands up into his hair, draws his head down for a kiss. She smells of soap and water, and tastes of heat and hope. He closes his eyes and drinks her in.

She breaks away, rinses off, and steps out again, as easily as she'd stepped in. He follows, and she dries him off with one of the threadbare white motel towels, rough against his skin but gentle in her hands. He does the same for her, every touch careful, caring, easy in a way it never is with anyone else.

He thinks about how they're back where they started, him and her and no one else, and how maybe it's wrong, but it's what he'd choose every time if given the choice. How he'd tried with Cassie, and been rejected. How she'd tried with Jess, and lost everything. How it didn't matter that she'd lied and he'd told the truth--there would never be anyone else in this the way they were, and that, in the end, that would be okay.

He reaches for his underwear but she shakes her head, draws him back into the bedroom and down onto the bed, clean sheets and a mattress that for once doesn't sag or creak when they sink into it.

Her breasts are a little fuller and softer than he remembers, so he spends some time getting reacquainted with them, using his hands and mouth to make her gasp and stutter. Her hips are curvier, too--she's lost the awkward coltishness she had at sixteen, has a confidence in her body that he's tried not to notice, and it takes his breath away. He slides his hands up her legs, strong and sleek, the soft, rough brush of stubble tickling his palms, and he's reminded of that night in the car, the humid summer air and the lazy way she'd kissed him, like they had all the time in the world and no one else existed, how the leather of the car seat stuck to his skin, and how he didn't care, because it felt so good to be so close to her.

"Open up, Sammy, come on. Lemme in," he whispers and she spreads her legs for him, lets him in the way she always does; the way she opens up for him breaks him open, as well. He'd taught her to pick locks when she was ten, and she's only gotten better at it over the years, until there isn't anyplace inside him he can keep her out of, and now she's returning the favor for the first time in years. He settles between her thighs, reveling in the soft give of her body beneath him as they kiss and touch, his fingers finding the slick, wet heat of her cunt like a compass finding north.

He's got some new scars, and she catalogues them with fingers and lips, maps the constellations of his freckles with her tongue and the shivery wet brush of her hair.

They go slow, no worries about being interrupted or caught (nobody here knows them, anyway), and it's been so long. He wants to relearn everything, the ticklish spots behind her knees, the way the insides of her elbows smell, the soap-and-salt taste of her skin, smooth against his tongue, and the soft-warm-wet feel of her tongue against his skin, making him shiver as she rediscovers him.

He's trembling a little when he rolls the condom on, tight ache in his cock nearly painful. She slides her fingers over her slick, pink pussy and then into his mouth; he licks them clean, hungry for the taste of her, and presses forward so he's cradled between her thighs, head of his cock nudging at her cunt, then slowly pressing in, perfect fit, like chambering a bullet.

She wraps her legs around his hips, locks her ankles around the small of his back, heels pressing down into his ass, and pushes up.

"Come on, Dean," she says, smiling in a way he hasn't seen in years. "Fuck me." And then she tightens her muscles around him, laughing.

He fucks her with long, slow strokes, eyes open and trained on her face, watching as her eyes, pupils dark and deep enough to drown in, irises just a thin ring of hazel around them, flutter closed, as she meets him thrust for thrust. He leans in, sucks her lower lip between his, then licks into her mouth, warm and home and everything he needs to keep him going. Need and heat roll through his blood, and he picks up his pace. Close, so close now, baby, he whispers into her ear, and she responds with a breathless, God, Dean.

She reaches down between them to circle her clit, body arching and bowing beneath him as she reaches for release, and then comes with a low, shuddering moan, her cunt clenching tight around him like a fist, nails digging into his shoulder.

He doesn't last long after that, thrusting in short, jerky motions until he's coming, everything else dropping away as pleasure rushes through him in waves, and her body's the shore he washes up on.

"Sam? Sammy?" he says when he can talk again. "You okay?"

"Dude," she answers breathlessly. "Yeah." She cups his cheek, runs her thumb over his lower lip, and draws him down for another kiss, letting him tell her everything he feels without ever making him say the words.

She rearranges the sheets to cover them, then curls up against him, already drifting off to sleep, a soft, satisfied smile on her face.

Dean lies awake, thinking. He let her go, and this time, she came back. And though he doesn't believe in wishing, he hopes that this time, she'll stay.

end

~*~


End file.
